


Breaking All The Rules

by Frayach



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Humor, Infidelity, Lawyers, Multi, Smut, Swingers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-30
Updated: 2012-09-30
Packaged: 2017-11-15 09:20:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/525718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frayach/pseuds/Frayach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Malfoy is slowly wringing the last vestiges of pleasure from Harry’s life with all his rules and committees and agendas and reports.  Or is he?</p><p>
  <img/>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breaking All The Rules

Draco Malfoy was driving Harry Potter around the bend.

Not that this was anything new. Malfoy had been driving Harry around one bend or another since they’d first laid eyes on each other. But recently the situation had got completely out of hand, and it was beginning to affect every facet of Harry’s life. At night, Harry lay in bed thinking about Malfoy, and in the morning when he awoke, his mind went from _Oi, fucking alarm!_ to _Shit, I hope Ginny remembered to buy bread yesterday because I certainly didn’t_ , to _Wow, this hard-on bloody hurts_ , to _Malfoy Malfoy Malfoy Malfoy Malfoy Malfoy Malfoy, etc._. There was no doubt about it; the merest allusion to a rigid prick brought Malfoy instantly to mind. Merlin, what Harry wouldn’t give to wrap his hands around . . .

“Honey! Did you pick up bread? The kids want toast.”

Shit. Harry rolled out of bed and hobbled to the loo. Five minutes into Monday, and he was already tense as piano wire.

And, as usual, it was all Malfoy’s fault.

 

“You _do_ realise, mate . . .”

Harry stopped bouncing his stress ball against the one-way window between the observation room, where he and Ron were, and the interrogation room where one of the department’s apprentices was undergoing a simulated exercise. Much to the relief, no doubt, of said apprentice. In hindsight, Harry would concede that having your unseen boss make loud rhythmic banging noises during your qualification exam probably was a bit distracting.

“I do realise what, Ron?”

“That you haven’t progressed much in twenty years.”

Harry frowned. “And how do you work that one out?” he asked.

“Well,” said Ron, counting on his fingers in a way that implied he had a lengthy list, “first of all, you’re still sleeping with my sister.”

Harry snorted. “Yeah, but she’s my _wife_ now. Not just my bit of fifth year jail bait.”

Ron punched him in the shoulder. “Oi, that’s my sister you’re talking about!”

“And _my_ wife,” Harry replied. “Who, by the way, would consider it a compliment to be referred to as jail bait. In fact, just last week, one of the lads at the Southwark . . .”

Ron stopped his ears with his fingers, humming tunelessly. “I can’t hear you,” he said.

Harry shrugged and began bouncing his stress ball again. On the other side of the glass, Tiddlewick jumped out of his skin. Harry reached for his clipboard and jotted in the margin, _Startles at loud, but entirely foreseeable, noises_.

“Second of all . . .” said Ron. Harry glanced up.

“I thought you were finished.”

Ron shook his head. “Oh no, mate. I’ve only just begun. Second of all, unlike all the other blokes from our year at Hogwarts, you haven’t started losing your hair . . .”

“Wow,” said Harry. “I’m filled with shame. Not only am I still happily committed to the girl of my dreams, but I’m not losing my hair. Please, Ron. Stop before you _really_ hurt my feelings . . .”

“No, please, Weasley, keep going,” came a familiar drawl from the doorway. “Whatever it is, if it’s causing Potter pain, it’s got to be worth-while. At least compared to whatever it is that you lazy arses . . . I mean, brave Aurors usually get up to.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “You’re late, Malfoy,” he said.

“No, you’re early.” Malfoy drew his squillion-Galleon watch from his pocket and pressed one of the myriad buttons arrayed around its platinum-plated circumference. _Monday, Eleven o’clock a.m. Meeting with Weasel and Speccy Git. Second Floor, Auror Headquarters, Third Observation Room,_ announced an unctuous voice. Harry looked at his own watch. It was 10:55.

“Sorry, Malfoy,” he said. “We’re not ready to speak with you until your appointed time. Ron and I were in the middle of an important conversation when you interrupted us. In fact, since you’ve taken up approximately five minutes of time that hadn’t been allotted to you, we’ll need to move our meeting to 11:05.”

Malfoy scowled but said nothing.

Ron’s eyebrows shot up. “Merlin, Harry,” he said. “I’m impressed. He didn’t even have a retort!”

Harry grinned and tapped his finger against his temple. “You’ve got to meet solicitors and Malfoys on their own subterranean level,” he said. “Especially Malfoys who are solicitors. Turn their own rules and procedures against them and they’re like a Kneazle caught in a _Lumos_.”

Ron nodded sagely. “Live by the appointment calendar, die by the appointment calendar, Malfoy,” he said.

Malfoy simply pulled out his watch, held it up and tapped on the glass with a perfectly manicured finger. “Time’s a-ticking,” he said.

Ron glowered at him and turned back to Harry. “As I was saying,” he continued, “the third indication that you haven’t changed in twenty years is . . .”

“Ding ding ding ding ding!” Malfoy said, imitating with uncanny accuracy the unholy bell that announced the closing of the Ministry’s Community Floo every evening. “Time’s up. It’s 11:05, gentlemen.”

“Argh!!” Harry cried, lunging at Malfoy with hands extended as if to strangle him where he stood, arms crossed, tapping the toe of his obscenely expensive Adelaide semi-brogue black calfskin shoe and wearing an indifferent expression. “Malfoy, I swear to God, if you . . .!”

“. . . that you’re still obsessed with Malfoy,” Ron continued undauntedly.

Malfoy and Harry forgot each other for the moment. “Pardon?” they asked in unison, turning in Ron’s direction.

“You heard me,” Ron replied, not looking at either of them and instead examining his fingernails with feigned aplomb.

“I am not now, nor have I ever been, obsessed with Malfoy,” Harry said.

Ron looked up and smiled. “Whatever you say, mate,” he said.

“I’m telling you,” Harry ground out. “I’m not obsessed with Malfoy.”

Ron shrugged. “Okay.”

“Ron, I’m . . .”

“You’re not obsessed with Malfoy. Got it, boss. All right then, are we ready to start this meeting?”

Harry glared at him. “Suggesting that I’m still obsessed with Malfoy – if, indeed, I was ever obsessed with him in the first instance – implies that I haven’t changed or matured or grown even a tiny bit since I was sixteen. Which really is preposterous! I mean, I’m a father now. I’m head of the Auror Department. I’m . . .”

“. . . an intolerable git.” Malfoy turned away and whistled up at the ceiling when Harry wheeled around to glare at him.

“Honestly, Ron. Only Freudians and the authors of obscenely popular children’s book series would suggest something so patently ridiculous.”

Ron looked chafed. “Harsh, Harry,” he said. “ _Harsh_.”

Harry opened his mouth to respond when suddenly they found chairs banging into the backs of their knees, and they collapsed with twin “Oi’s!” as Malfoy transfigured their Muggle table tennis table into a vast mahogany expanse worthy of the Minister’s office. The bats and balls and battered Quidditch magazines became the pieces of a silver tea service. Ron reached for the plate of finger sandwiches and sniffed at them suspiciously before choosing one apparently at random and stuffing it in his mouth.

“Mmm, salmon paste and capers,” he said. “Hey, Malfoy, pour us some tea!”

Harry rolled his eyes and opened the folder that Malfoy had shoved under his nose. “What’s this?” he asked, just as sceptical of the memo he discovered there as Ron had been of the sandwiches. It had an inauspicious title.

“How sad,” said Malfoy, fixing a silver nib with irritating fastidiousness on the tip of his foot-long Diricawl plume quill. “I didn’t think they permitted people to leave Hogwarts without first teaching them how to read. It’s a memorandum entitled, ‘New Protocols for Auror Conduct in the Apprehension of Suspects and their Subsequent Interrogation.’”

Harry drained his thimble-sized teacup in a single gulp. Malfoy looked up from the memo with an arched eyebrow and poured him another dribble with a flick of his wand. “Charming, Potter,” he said when Harry slurped it down as well.

“What can I say?” Harry replied. “Not all of us are used to drinking our tea from acorn caps like Thumbelina.”

“Thumba-who?” said Ron, reaching for yet another sandwich.

Malfoy released an exaggerated sigh. “I realise,” he said, “that not everyone has work they must accomplish by the end of the week, but I, unfortunately, do. So, if I could direct your attention to page three, section IX, subsection F, paragraph iii, you will see that no Auror shall forthwith engage in Muggle pastimes involving small spherical orbs and elliptical paddles while supervising the training, education, certification, tutorial, or any other didactic endeavour of an unqualified apprentice.”

“Table tennis bats aren’t elliptical,” said Ron.

Harry shook his head. “Is that what they taught you in law school?” he asked. “How to wring the last vestige of fun from life with your bare-knuckled hands?”

Malfoy glanced up, frowning thoughtfully. “Why, of course,” he said as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. “That was one of the first-year courses. In which, naturally, I received top marks. Now, if you would be so kind as to turn to page five, section . . .”

“Tell us again,” said Ron, “what is it that you did with old Bumcrusty? Should we be out looking for his body in some bog somewhere?”

Malfoy set aside his quill and fixed him with a long-suffering look.

“Mr Brummcastle retired as the Minister’s counsellor last month. You and Potter and your attendant spouses and spawn were at his retirement party.”

Ron scratched absently at his chin for a moment. “Ah!” he said. “I remember now, although only vaguely. The punch was a bit feisty if I recall.”

“Look here, Malfoy,” said Harry, closing his folder in a manner that, had it not been, in fact, a folder, would have produced a satisfying _slam_. “I know they pay _you_ to torture _us_ with sub-sub-sub-sections, but they pay _us_ to torture _them_ . . .” he pointed to the window to the interrogation room, “. . . to keep people like _you_ and all the other paper-pushing arseholes safe. So, if you’ll please excuse us, we have work to do . . .”

“They’re paying us to torture Tiddlewick?” Ron said. “All right!”

Harry looked at him like the complete berk he was. “Not Tiddlydick. The suspects, the prisoners, the bad guys . . .”

Ron looked crestfallen. “Shame,” he said. “I was looking forward to trying out those new thumb screws on the little blighter.”

With a flick of his wand, Malfoy re-transfigured the table and the tea service, and Harry suddenly found himself trying to take a sip from a soggy copy of _Quidditch Monthly_. He was about to voice his annoyance, when Malfoy re-Transfigured his chair back into a Styrofoam cup, which, in turn, was promptly rendered crumpet sized when it was crushed by Harry’s fall. He clambered to his feet, rubbing his backside.

“Classy, Malfoy,” he grumbled.

“Right. Well, this has been a productive meeting,” Malfoy said. “Potter, I’ll be expecting your report in three weeks on the steps you’ve taken to bring your department into compliance with the new protocol. If you have any questions in the meantime, you know where to find me.”

Harry scowled after Malfoy and his theatrical swirl of hand-stitched, cut-to-fit Vicuña wool robes. Despite the unlikelihood that he’d have questions (let alone draft the report), unfortunately, it was all too true. He _did_ know where to find Malfoy.

 

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Shall we call this meeting to order?”

Ginny leaned against Harry and, in an effort to conceal her face, held up the agenda they’d been given when they’d walked in the door. “Merlin’s saggy left tit,” she whispered. “How long did you tell Victoire we’d be tonight? This could take _hours_!”

Harry groaned and deflated against the back of his aluminium Muggle folding chair. Although its seat was charmed to feel cushioned, he just knew his arse would be asleep before Malfoy called the first vote.

“Astoria and I have arranged for several people to address you this evening before we vote on this important proposal. First, I would like to introduce you to Mrs Vivian Vanderbent, who comes to us all the way from the Canterbury Society for the Preservation of Antique Brass Letter Slots . . .”

“Honestly,” said Ginny, slipping her hand into Harry’s and fiddling with his wedding band like she always did when she was bored out of her mind. “I think he must suffer from some rare pathology or something.”

“Run-at-the-mouth disease?” Harry suggested. “Hardening of the parliamentary arteries, perhaps?”

“More like an acute case of stick-up-the-arse-itis,” she said. “Sweet Circe, is this really the _third_ meeting at which we’ve debated whether our building should have letter slots or post boxes when most of our bloody mail arrives by owl?”

Harry feigned a look of shock and chagrin. “But honey! Haven’t you been listening? It’s not the functionality that’s important; it’s how it _looks_. Merlin! What kind of Philistine did I marry?”

Ginny stifled a giggle against his shoulder. “The kind that just bought a new pair of crotchless knickers this afternoon when I was supposed to be shopping for Lily’s school uniform.”

Harry groaned. “Oh God. Why oh why did you have to remind me? The bloody Ravenwood Primary School board of governors is supposed to meet tomorrow night.”

Ginny grimaced. “How unbearable,” she said. “Two nights in a row! Poor baby, I’ll make sure to have a glass of Ogden’s poured and waiting for you when you get home.”

“It’ll take more than Ogden’s to revive me,” Harry grumbled. Ginny smiled and gave him a peck on the cheek.

“Well, then it’s a good thing that Friday is a Southwark night.”

Harry brightened immediately at the sound of those magical words.

“Thank Merlin,” he said. “It won’t be a moment too soon, either.”

Ginny smiled the same sly secretive little smile she always wore when they spoke of their favourite marital pastime and slipped her arm through his.

“Thank you, Mrs Vanderbent,” said Malfoy, standing from his chair behind the podium and clapping the soundless obsequious claps of the well-bred and perpetually bored. “I’m certain that we all found your insights most enlightening. Now, ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you Mr Loftus Ludbank from the Royal Society of Eighteenth Century Mail Receptacle Enthusiasts.”

Harry glanced over at Ginny, hoping to draw her into another whispered conversation, but she’d become engrossed in the sweater she was knitting. When they’d married, she’d vowed she would never take up that most Mrs Weasley-ish of hobbies, but ever since they’d moved to Belgravia Court and been brow-beaten into attending the monthly meetings of its Preservation Committee, she’d developed a taste for it. He watched as her needles clicked and the ball of yarn in her bag slowly unravelled. Women just didn’t know how good they had it. They could knit or crochet or do needlepoint. They could even breastfeed. But not men. They just had to sit and sit and sit and sit and sit and sit and sit and . . .

. . . fantasise about sex. Harry smiled goofily to himself as he slipped into the molten glow of a waking wet dream. It didn’t matter who he was fucking. It never did. All that mattered was the sensation of unfettered libidinous release. The roll grind thrust pump of his pelvis against his partner’s bare upturned arse. Male or female, it didn’t matter. Ginny or a stranger, that didn’t matter either. All that mattered was that he could feel the pleasure curling his toes, creeping slowly up the muscles of his calves and the backs of his thighs, inching closer and closer to his . . .

“Thank you, Mr Ludbank. Well, we’ve got one more speaker before we vote on our first proposal this evening, but before I introduce her, just to ensure the Committee’s secretary has a complete accounting of all those present tonight, I’d like to ask everyone who arrived after we first took attendance to please stand.”

Setting aside her knitting, Ginny gripped Harry’s hand and stood, pulling him up before he had the chance to register what was happening, and once he did, it was too late. He grabbed for his cloak but not before Malfoy’s gaze zeroed in on him like a magnet to a piece of . . .

. . . steel. Harry felt himself go scarlet as Malfoy’s bland solicitor’s expression transformed into a gleeful smirk. Harry quickly clutched his cloak over his straining erection and sat back down.

There was no doubt about it. Malfoy was driving him around the bend.

 

The following evening was no improvement, especially after Harry had spent the entire afternoon in Malfoy’s office in the company of the other Ministry department heads going over, in excruciating detail, Malfoy’s new recruitment guidelines. The only fleeting moment of amusement came when Flummings had asked whether it would expose the government to liability if he sacked his secretaries for providing unsatisfactory blow jobs. Malfoy had gaped at him, then frowned, and then commenced again to gape. Harry had found it immensely satisfying. Odd as it seemed, he had to admit that he often found himself feeling nostalgic for the old Malfoy. The Malfoy who made grand pronouncements that he then, invariably, failed to live up to. The Malfoy who blushed and spluttered and fumed and stamped his foot in anger.

That afternoon had been the most discomfited Harry had seen Malfoy since their paths had crossed again three years ago after Malfoy had returned from Hong Kong. He and his wife and mother had moved there following Lucius’s trial, and Harry had almost forgotten the git even existed. Until the day he’d noticed Malfoy’s name among the members of the board of the Belgravia Court Preservation Society. And on the list of governors for Ravenwood Primary. And the library’s board of trustees. And the Borough’s Muggle Governance Liaisons. Like a noxious vapour, Malfoy had, virtually overnight it seemed, infiltrated every institution of London’s Wizarding world. He was the treasurer for the Warlocks for World Health Organization, the secretary for the St. Mungo’s Outreach Programme, the chief coordinator of the All Hallows Eve Annual Fete and Gala, and the president of the Society for the Protection of Unplottable Properties. In short, Malfoy and his punctiliousness were _everywhere_ that Harry turned these days. From his job, to his kids’ school, to his neighbourhood, to his pet charities, and worst of all to his swing . . .

“Potter.”

Harry shook his head and sat up in his chair. “Yeah, Malfoy?”

“Clytemnestra has suggested that we vote on her suggestion to vote on the proposal that we form a committee on the viability of forming a committee to research the pros and cons of adding another part-time assistant to the assistant headmaster position.” 

Harry felt his eyes cross. “And?” he said.

“And, we’re fielding comments from all the governors regarding her suggestion.”

“Her suggestion that we vote on the proposal?”

“No, her suggestion that we vote on whether we should vote at this meeting or the next on the proposal.”

Harry felt his hands curl into fists of frustration and impotent rage.

“Why can’t we just vote tonight on whether to add the assistant headmaster position?” he asked, struggling to keep his voice level despite the panic that was beginning to nibble at the edges of his sanity. Being stuck in a meeting run by Malfoy was like being hit with a Body-Bind Curse. Your brain was still awake, but your ability to act was completely incapacitated. With nothing to release it on, Harry felt his Fight or Flight response turn on its owner like a rabid badger caught in a trap. Like a mutinous immune response. Like a . . .

Malfoy folded his elegant hands on the table and fixed Harry with an expression of limitless forbearance that conveyed perfectly his intent to spend, if need be, the whole night in the Ravenwood library, sitting in chairs designed for eight year-olds and sipping lukewarm tea that no amount of heating charms would ever manage to make hot again.

It made Harry’s blood run cold. Colder even than their tea.

“Because, Potter,” Malfoy said in a tone of infinite patience, “we have yet to form a committee to ascertain the viability of forming a committee to research . . .”

Harry knew that Malfoy must still be speaking because his lips were moving, and every so often there was just the hint of the tip of his tongue, but blissfully he could no longer hear Malfoy’s voice. Harry tilted his head, considering the matter thoughtfully. True, he wasn’t surprised that Malfoy’s tongue was pointy, but he _was_ surprised that it was pink. If someone had asked him, Harry would have guessed that it was purple (even though the idea of a purple tongue was slightly repugnant). But then again, wasn’t Malfoy the very embodiment of repugnant? Harry frowned, tilting his head to the other side. Perhaps such an assessment would be a tad harsh. If one were seeing Malfoy for the first time, in passing – as in the sense of a from-the-window-of-an-accelerating-train kind of passing – one might find him attractive. Handsome even, with his chiselled features and pronounced widow’s peak and his ruthlessly sensual mouth . . .

A mouth that was now accusing Harry of not caring about the welfare of his and his neighbours’ children.

Scowling, Harry threw down the quill he hadn’t even realised he was chewing on.

“That’s out of line, Malfoy,” he said. “Of course I care about Al and Lily’s welfare and the welfare of everyone else’s children. Believe it or not, I even care about Scorpius’s welfare. Not that you actually deign to let him attend the school whose Board of Governors you preside over . . .”

“I’ve already told you,” Malfoy said. “Scorpius needed to be home-tutored. He’s specially . . .”

“Gifted. Yeah, you told us, Malfoy. And I’ll be glad for his sake when he finally goes to Hogwarts this autumn and learns to feed himself without you and Astoria holding his utensils for him . . .”

Fixing Harry with a withering stare, Malfoy tore open his dog-eared copy of _Parnassus’s Rules of Parliamentary Procedure_ and began flipping through the pages so violently that several of them ripped.

“ _In the event that a member of the governing body should breach the laws of basic decorum,_ ” he read aloud, “ _his peers shall make a note of such breach in the body’s record of proceedings . . ._ ”

Harry sighed heavily. “Malfoy, I’m sorry,” he said. “Please, put away the book before someone gets hurt, and let’s see if we can wrap up this meeting before midnight, shall we?”

Malfoy glanced up, and Harry noted, somewhat guiltily, that his cheeks were flushed an angry pink.

“I donate my valuable time to institutions and endeavours that don’t even directly benefit my family, and this is the thanks I receive?” he asked the room at large, but Harry knew the question was directed specifically at him.

He shrugged. “What can I say, Malfoy? Some of us clearly are far more selfish than you are. Now, can I offer you a hand down from that high horse so we can vote on this suggestion to vote on a proposal to propose a proposal or whatever the bloody hell it is we’re still doing here at half past ten on a Thursday night?”

Glancing around at the faces reflecting varying stages of Death By Meeting, Malfoy pressed his lips in a thin line and drew a deep breath through his nose that made his nostrils flare before settling once again into an aspect indicative less of mortal offense than profound disappointment at humanity’s general lack of moral fibre.

“Very well,” he said. “All those in favour of Clytemnestra’s suggestion, indicate that favour by raising your hand and saying ‘Aye.’”

Harry raised his hand and then, hearing the sound of snores beside him, elbowed Seamus in the ribs.

“Raise your hand and say ‘Aye,’ mate,” Harry said out of the corner of his mouth when Seamus started, blinking and wiping the drool off his chin with the back of his hand.

“What are we voting on?” Seamus whispered. “The last thing I remember is debating whether the secretary should take meeting notes on both sides of the parchment or just one.”

“I’m buggered if I know,” Harry replied. “But for the love of all things holy, Finnigan, just say ‘Aye’.”

“Aye!” cried Seamus, startling his neighbour on his other side out of a coma and passing Harry’s message on to him as well.

“The ‘aye’s’ have it, then,” Malfoy announced after counting and recounting and then asking the vice president to check his count. “And that brings our business here tonight to a close.”

“Thank you, dear God,” Harry murmured, dropping his head to the table and rocking it from side to side. “You are a merciful deity.”

“I had no idea you were so pious,” Seamus said, reaching for his cloak.

“I wasn’t until Malfoy became an officer of every governing body that touches my life in even the remotest sense,” Harry replied, standing and throwing his own cloak over his shoulders. “Since then, I’ve taken up praying to every deity there is. I’m convinced this is punishment for some venial sin I committed unwittingly along the way, and I just want to be sure I’m no longer pissing off the gods.”

Seamus chuckled and clapped Harry on the shoulder. “Good luck with that,” he said. “Those polytheistic religions have a shit load of ‘em. Miss just one, mate, and you’re fucked.”

 

The following evening, it became instantly clear the moment he and Ginny stepped through the door that somehow, despite his best intentions, Harry had neglected one of the gods.

Could it have been Enlil, Sumerian lord of the wind, he wondered as the evening’s hostess closed the door behind them and helped them out of their cloaks. Or perhaps Surya, chief sun deity of the Hindus . . .

“Ah!” he cried, “Anubis!”

Ginny paused in the middle of adjusting her bustier. “Who’s Anubis?” she asked. “A new member I haven’t met yet?” She glanced around their immediate vicinity. “I don’t see anyone new. Where is he? I’m assuming it’s a he. Will I like him?”

Harry shook his head. “Anubis is the Egyptian god of mummification,” he said. “I forgot to make him a burnt offering this morning. How could I have been so stupid?”

Ginny fixed him with a level gaze that fully conveyed her conviction that he had lost his mind at some point between leaving for work that morning and dropping the kids off at Andromeda’s place half an hour ago.

“It has to be him,” Harry muttered, distractedly taking a handful of condoms from the bowl the hostess was holding out to them. “I mean, think about it! He’s the god of _mummification_ , for Merlin’s sake . . .”

“Honey,” Ginny said. “Do you really think you’re going to be able to manage fourteen partners tonight? I mean, you’ve had a bit of a long week. Why don’t you set a more attainable goal? Like two, for instance.”

“Huh?” Harry turned towards her and then glanced at his hand overflowing with condom packets. “Oh. Yeah, you’re probably right.” He beckoned to the hostess. “Sorry, Wilma,” he said, returning all but four of the packets. “Wasn’t paying attention.”

Wilma’s red painted mouth spread in a silky grin beneath her elaborate mask. “No problem, Harry,” she said. “I merely thought you’d finally relented and tried Bob’s new Longevity Potion.”

Harry blanched. “No, I most emphatically did not,” he said. “That man’s an amateur. I have no desire to die by erection, thank you very much. I’m surprised he hasn’t been sued yet.”

“Oh, he has,” said a voice behind Harry. “Several times. Fortunately for him, he had excellent counsel.”

Harry turned, nearly splattering his bare chest with the drink Wilma had slipped into his hand before returning to her post at the door.

“Malfoy,” he said. “You are out of your mind.”

Malfoy’s eyes widened innocently behind his simple, but no doubt insanely expensive, black satin mask. “Why? Because I represented Bob Brocklehurst? I don’t think so, Potter. Do you have any idea how much that man’s worth?”

Harry scowled and adjusted his own mask, which was slowly slipping down off his nose. The elastic was knackered, and Ginny had been on his case for ages to replace it.

“No,” he replied. “Not because of Brocklehurst. Because of _this_!” He brandished the piece of parchment Wilma had handed to him and Ginny earlier when offering them their choice of butt plug or beads.

Malfoy frowned. “I don’t see what’s got your non-existent knickers all in a twist,” he said with a smirking glance at Harry’s nakedness. There was an on-going rivalry at the Southwark Swingers Club between those, like Harry, who didn’t bother with clothes or costumes, and those, like the Malfoys, who were always clothed in some fashion, even if, like tonight, the garments were crotchless. Always the peace-maker, Ginny sometimes went nude and sometimes not.

“Astoria, what a lovely bondage bra,” she said, admiring the metal rings that glinted in the candlelight and, knowing the Malfoys, were probably made from hand-wrought silver. “Is that latex or leather? I can’t tell in this light.” Astoria smiled, releasing her arm from Malfoy’s and slipping it through Ginny’s instead. They wandered off towards the preparation chamber, chatting amiably about rubber corsets and letter slots and how difficult it was to get their sons to clean their rooms. Harry turned back to Malfoy.

“My non-existent knickers are in a twist because this place was the last place on earth not yet taken over by bureaucracy and paperwork and parliamentary procedures, and you want to ruin that!”

Malfoy looked as offended as a person wearing a mask that covered the entire upper half of his face can look. “I’m not ruining anything, Potter,” he replied. “I’m simply protecting the Southwark from undemocratic processes. Certainly, I would have thought that you of all people would be concerned about upholding democracy.”

Harry shook his head. “Not a chance, Malfoy,” he replied. “Not a chance. That guilt trip isn’t going to work on me tonight. Not after everything you’ve already put me through this week.”

“There, there,” Malfoy said in a patronizing tone. “This will only take a few minutes, and then you can get up to whatever it is that you get up to.”

Harry scowled at Malfoy’s less than subtle insinuation that Harry partook of plebeian pleasures at the Southwark. So what if he was fond of good old-fashioned fucking? He didn’t need all those wheels and pulleys and nipple clamps and creepy looking contraptions that looked like Muggle electric chairs. He was perfectly happy with a fit body and a willing hole, and if that made him seem déclassé in Malfoy’s eyes, well then, so be it.

“A few minutes,” he scoffed. “My arse. More like a few hours. After which the chances of me being able to get it up will be about as good as the Wollsleys fucking anyone else but each other . . .”

“ _Exactly,_ ” Malfoy said with feeling. “You’re making my point for me, Potter . . .” Harry glanced down at Malfoy’s flaccid prick, and Malfoy cleared his throat. “Intellectual point,” he said by way of clarification. “At present, the Southwark is barely controlled chaos. No rules beyond the most rudimentary. No uniform standards. I mean, Merlin! We have couples fucking the same couples every time and forming nefarious little factions. We have _at least_ five chaps who do nothing but masturbate, which, although fine once in a while, is a sign of profound antisocial tendencies when a fellow engages in no other pursuits, if you ask me. Did you know that the Dark Lord was a voyeur? I bet you didn’t. As were eight out of ten of the last century’s fascist leaders. It’s a pattern. And if it wasn’t bad enough that the Southwark is apparently evolving into an incubator for tomorrow’s totalitarian dictators, we have couples like the Wollsleys! Tell me, Potter: who comes to a swingers’ club every week and only ever fucks his own wife? It’s insanity. A veritable Hobbesian experiment. Here at the Southwark, we are nothing but man in his natural state . . .”

Harry glanced down at his own (albeit currently disinterested) natural state. “And that’s bad because . . . ?”

Malfoy sighed his patented long-suffering sigh – a sigh that Harry had heard at least a thousand times in the past week alone. “Perhaps you do not recall, but man in his natural state is _bellum omnium contra omnes_ . . .”

“Bellum omni-what?” Harry said. Malfoy took a deep breath. “And spare me the pathos-laden sigh, Malfoy. I admit it: I’m just a stupid Auror who wants to get my dick wet, not brush up on my political science.”

“ _Leviathan_ , Potter?” Malfoy said. “Thomas Hobbes? Seventeenth century philosopher? The man who coined the saying that life in a state of nature is ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’? Ring any bells?”

Harry shook his head. “I’m sorry to hear about your premature ejaculation problem, Malfoy,” he replied. “But I don’t see why it should have to affect the rest of us – well, other than the poor sods who end up as your partners, I mean.”

Malfoy fixed Harry with an indifferent gaze.

“Ha ha, very funny,” he said. “You grow more amusing by the day, Potter. I can see it’s a waste of time trying to explain the ‘whys’ to you, so I’ll stick with the ‘wherefores.’ Tonight, we’ll be voting on a board of officers.”

Harry groaned and glanced around for the nearest sharp object. Since the hostess had secured their wands at the door, the riding crops hanging against the wall looked the most suitable for the purpose of poking his own eyes out.

“Fine,” he said, letting the profound sense of defeat he felt seep into his voice. “I can see this has the inertia behind it of a mountain troll on three pots of coffee. But can it please be brief? I really do want to cop off before the end of the night. At least once. Who’s running?”

“Besides me, of course?” Malfoy asked.

Harry rolled his eyes. “That goes without saying.”

Malfoy pulled a piece of parchment from the pocket of his poured-on crotchless leather trousers and unrolled it.

“We’ll be electing three officers,” he said. “Running for treasurer is Astoria, Constance Mayweather and Barnabas Crosby. The candidates for secretary are Bob Brocklehurst . . .”

“Naturally,” Harry said sarcastically.

“. . . Thelma Lynch and Barry Krackenbarry. And for president, we only have two candidates thus far. Myself and Dolores.”

Harry felt the room around them shrink suddenly and then expand outwards like the computer simulations of the Big Bang he’d once seen on a BBC documentary. He clutched at the banister to keep himself from toppling over out of sheer vertigo.

“Dolores?” he gasped. “Dolores _Umbridge_?”

Malfoy nodded, re-rolling the parchment and returning it to his pocket. “The one and only.”

“Oh, dear sweet Merlin,” Harry moaned. “Or Enlil or Anubis or . . .”

“Potter, I’ve no idea what you’re babbling about,” Malfoy said, removing his omnipresent watch from his other pocket and examining it for a moment. “But whatever it is, make it quick. The vote is scheduled to take place in half an hour, and I would really like to have an orgasm between now and then. Just to take the edge off,” he continued. “Running for elected office always rather stresses me out.”

“I had _no idea_ that cow was even a member,” Harry said. “If I had, I doubt Ginny and I would’ve joined in the first place.”

Malfoy frowned. “And where would you have gone then?” he asked. “The Southampton Swingers Society? I’ve heard they actually start off their evenings with parlour games and flavoured massage oils.” He shuddered. “The _horror_.”

“But how?” Harry demanded. “When? I’ve never seen her here. And believe me, I would remember. That’s a sight that would have burnt itself onto my retinas for all eternity, and not in a good way.”

Obviously growing bored with their continued conversation, Malfoy glanced around in search of his first conquest for the night. “I don’t think she actually partakes in the activities anymore,” he replied absently. “Now, if you’ll please excuse me, I . . .”

“Ah! I see!” Harry exclaimed, vaguely aware that he may be starting to sound a bit unhinged. “So, she’s one of those fascist voyeurs you were talking about earlier. Why does that not surprise me? Did I ever tell you what she did to me in my fifth year . . .”

Malfoy stifled a yawn behind one hand while he adjusted his thickening prick with the other, stroking it lazily but lovingly like a beloved pet. “As much as I’d like to take a trip down memory lane with you, Potter,” he said, “I came here tonight to do something other than talk.”

“For a change,” Harry muttered. “Yeah, all right, Malfoy. Go and do your thing. But I swear, if Dolores Umbridge gets elected tonight . . .”

Malfoy grinned, still stroking his cock. “So, you’re saying you support my candidacy? How thoughtful of you, Potter. And there I was thinking that maybe you were tired of seeing my name at the head of every board of every organisation you came across.”

Harry scowled. “‘Support’ is hardly what I feel regarding your quote-unquote ‘candidacy’,” he replied. “I feel about the prospect of you as president much as Odysseus must have felt about Scylla when faced with Charybdis.”

Malfoy arched a pale eyebrow so high that it became visible above the edge of his mask. “A passably good grasp of Greek mythology. Colour me impressed, Potter,” he said.

Harry noticed that Malfoy’s grip around his prick had tightened, and he’d grown hard enough that with each tug, the head pulled free of the foreskin. He shrugged off the compliment. “I’ve found it necessary recently to bone up on my ancient deities,” he said.

Malfoy grinned again. “Well, enjoy your boning up, Potter. I’ll see you in half an hour.”

Harry watched Malfoy turn and disappear into the swirl of shadows and bodies swaying to the trance-inducing music coursing through the air and making the floor beneath him pulse. Casually, Harry reached down to his own groin and discovered, to his surprise, that he was already fully erect. But before he had a chance to do anything about it, the prospect of Umbridge as president of the Southwark Swingers Club suddenly returned to him with a wave of cock-wilting horror. Settling his face into as grim an expression of determination as possible whilst wearing a mask with wonky elastic, he went off in search of the only person who could help him.

“Harry!” Hermione cried, pushing away the head of the twenty-two year-old star Seeker for the Harpies from between her legs. “What’s wrong? It looks as though you’ve seen a ghost of a ghost!”

Harry shook his head. “It’s worse than that,” he replied.

Hermione struggled for a moment to remove her feet from the stirrups of the coveted Chair of Love.

“I’m sorry,” Harry said. “I know you’ve had your name down for the Chair for a month. I wouldn’t interrupt you if this wasn’t important.”

Hermione reached for a tissue and cleaned herself up efficiently.

“Quite alright,” she said. “I’ve already come twice and was starting to feel a bit sensitive. I don’t know how Ginny manages four in a row like she does.”

“Harry says I have a callus on my clit,” Ginny piped up from the corner where she was sixty-nining the assistant counsel for the Ludicrous Patents Office amidst an array of leopard print cushions.

“Well, that might explain it, then,” said Hermione. “Now, Harry, what’s going on that’s got you in such an unexcited state?” She glanced meaningful at his prick, which, at the memory of Dolores Umbridge, had made a valiant attempt at crawling inside his body. It was poking out now like a timid-hearted turtle.

“Have you heard the Club will be voting on officers later tonight?” Harry asked, leading the way out of the All-Things-Oral room and over to a couple of armchairs in an alcove by the stairs.

Hermione nodded. “Of course,” she said. “I got the announcement when I walked in the door.”

“Well, guess who’s running for president,” Harry replied.

Hermione frowned. “Is this a trick question?” she asked. “I’m sure Malfoy is.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “That goes without saying,” he said. “But guess who else.”

Hermione shook her head, causing the colourful Fwooper feathers on her mask to tickle her nose. “I haven’t the faintest clue,” she replied, before sneezing loudly.

“Bless you,” said Astoria pleasantly as she passed by on the arms of two glistening Brazilian wizards with nipples so hard and pointy, Harry was pretty sure he could have used them earlier when he’d been looking for something with which to put out his eyes.

“Thank you, love,” Hermione called after her.

“Dolores Umbridge,” Harry said.

Hermione hands flew to her cupless-corseted breasts. “No!” she gasped.

Harry gave her a grim nod. “It’s true,” he said.

“But we simply can’t let this happen, Harry,” she cried. “That horrible woman! After everything she did?"

“I know,” he said. “I know.”

Hermione sat up so abruptly that her naked bum made a squeaking sound on the chair’s vinyl seat. “I’ve got it!” she exclaimed, her hands flapping about in the way they always did when she got The Perfect Idea. “Harry,” she continued urgently, “how many Gryffindors belong to the club?”  
“Well, there’s you and me and Ginny,” he said, counting the names off on his fingers. “And there’s Dean and Percy. And Ron, of course, although he’s hardly an _active_ member . . .”

Hermione shook her head wearily. “Don’t even go there, Harry,” she said. “I’ve done everything I could to get him to give it another go. It’s just so unfortunate that the first time he came was that night we had that ill-fated jelly-wrestling contest.” 

“I know,” Harry said. “He’s a hopeless prude. But at least he still lets you come. Er, no pun intended, of course.”

Hermione grinned and swatted at his arm playfully. “Not without a lot of grumbling and not without extracting my promise that I’ll go to the Burrow _every bloody Sunday_.”

Harry shivered with distaste. He and Ginny loved visiting Arthur and Molly once a month, but the thought of having to endure a dinner there every week? He shivered again.

“Cold?” Hermione asked, casting a wandless warming charm on him.

“No, but thanks anyway,” Harry replied. “I really should learn how to do that. Nothing’s worse than a chilly willy. But back to the matter of Umbridge. Why did you ask me how many Gryffindors belong to the club?”

“Because,” Hermione replied, rising to her feet and offering her hand to Harry, “all of them are going to throw their hat in the presidential race. Even you, Harry Potter.”

 

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen!”

Slowly, the murmurs in the grand ballroom of the Southwark Swingers’ mansion quieted as Malfoy stood up behind the podium he’d transfigured from the Club’s pillory, which was a shame, really, Harry found himself thinking. He’d much prefer Malfoy in a pillory than behind a podium. Especially after having seen him in action earlier. During his and Hermione’s search for Gryffindors, he’d happened upon Malfoy fucking a witch on her knees in hog-tie and found himself considerably aroused by the measured pistoning of Malfoy’s prick and the way it gleamed wetly in the torch light each time he pulled out. Although he knew he should be continuing his hunt, Harry had watched until Malfoy came, silently but hard, his whole body shuddering. He’d obviously been fucking her for a while because when he withdrew his prick and reached between the girl’s legs to touch her clit, she came almost immediately, her cunt pulsing spasmodically, and when Malfoy stood, Harry noticed his thighs were soaked with her lubricant.

 _Who are you going to vote for, honey?_ he’d asked as he’d released her bonds and she’d melted into a pool of her own juices.

 _Draco Malfoy, of course_ , she’d cooed contentedly. _Who else?_

Malfoy had turned to find Harry watching them, and his eyes had dropped from Harry’s face to his rigid as-of-yet-untouched dick.

 _It’s a shame_ , he’d said, _that we have a meeting to attend because otherwise I might be persuaded to attend to **you**_.

Harry had accompanied him out of the room and stood with him in the hall while Malfoy wiped his hands with one of the steaming towels that sat, rolled-up like sausages, on silver platters at every entrance. _By the way_ , he said. _Before you say something smartarse, I’ll have you know that I’m not usually into voyeurism_

 _Which doesn’t mean you aren’t still a fascist_ , Malfoy said. He smirked at Harry’s unflagging erection. _Better take care of that, Potter_ , he purred. _I want you to have a clear head later when you vote for me_.

“Thank you for your attention. Now, as you are all aware, we will be voting tonight on several key offices in our noble Club’s new governing board . . .”

Slowly, Harry’s eyes drifted shut out of sheer habit. It didn’t matter that he was sitting, completely starkers, surrounded by many of Wizarding London’s most attractive bodies – some of which were still engaged in various acts of sexual pleasuring – he was still going to slip into a coma at the mere sound of Malfoy’s meeting voice. Why, Harry found himself thinking, couldn’t Malfoy conduct a meeting in the same tone he’d used with the witch upstairs? How much more interesting things would be if he spoke the words “point of order” or “unanimous consent” or, even better, “lay on the table subject to call,” with that commandingly silky voice instead of the dry tone he was currently using.

“ . . . it looks as though we have a quorum. Congratulations, Thelma Lynch, on your election as our new treasurer . . .”

“Harry!” Ginny jabbed him in the ribs. “Wake up! You’ve missed two of the votes already. This is just like the other night when you missed the vote on the new post box design.”

Harry rubbed his face. “Sorry,” he said. “But seriously, Gin, if you had to listen to the git as much as I do, you’d realise that sleep is a defence mechanism.”

“Now, for the last item on the agenda. We have tonight two candidates for the important position of president. Dolores Umbridge . . .”

Instinctively, Harry’s hands flew to his face as though he was watching a Muggle horror flick and couldn’t bear to see the axe-murder victims strewn about the dorm of the Catholic girls’ school. He felt Hermione squeeze his shoulder in solidarity.

“It’s okay, sweetie,” Ginny whispered. “She’s not naked. Although that latex cat-suit . . .”

“Ahhhh!” Harry shrieked.

Every head in the room turned in his direction.

“Is there something wrong, Potter?” Malfoy asked archly.

“Yes, there’s something wrong, Malfoy!” Harry squeaked. He knew his voice was several octaves higher than it should be, but he couldn’t help it. “Dolores Umbridge can _not_ become president of this Club!” He stared at Malfoy, his eyes trying to convey the full extent of his panic.

“Well, that is what we’re here to decide tonight,” Malfoy said in his most reasonable of reasonable person voices, the very tone of which implied that the person it was directed at was anything _but_ reasonable. “If you choose not to vote for Dolores, then there’s always . . . well, me.”

“Hem hem . . .”

“Before you interrupted these orderly proceedings, Potter, I was just about to announce my own candidacy . . .”

“Hem hem . . .”

“Oh merciful Shiva,” Harry mumbled, his eyes squeezed shut so tightly that he saw stars behind his lids. “Please let me wake up in my own bed and have this all have been a very _very_ bad dream.” Ginny rubbed his back soothingly.

“Hem hem!”

“Er, it appears Dolores would like to say a few words before the vote,” Malfoy announced. Harry still hadn’t opened his eyes, but he nonetheless suspected from his uncharacteristic “er” that Malfoy was probably frowning with consternation, just as he’d done at the Preservation of Unplottable Properties meeting three weeks ago when Herb Grunbunyon had insisted on submitting his proposal to register his outdoor latrine as a historical landmark.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” came the simpering voice, and instantly Harry felt his eyelid start to tic. “As a proud member of this club since my youth and a former Hogwarts administrator and high-ranking Ministry official, I can assure you that I will have our proud heritage at heart when I enact unilaterally, hem, I mean, submit for your consideration the following initiatives.”

Somewhere, beyond the homicidal buzzing in his ears, Harry heard the sound of an enormous scroll unfurling.

“First, I will enact, hem, I mean, _we_ will consider adopting strict new admissions standards, as well as review the suitability of memberships already granted, which in hindsight, may have been hastily – and erroneously – extended. Second, I will enforce, hem, I mean, _we_ will research the possibility of enforcing new decorative standards. There is currently far too much darkness and candles and vinyl. I have several proposals for new colour schemes . . .”

“Yeah, chintz upholstery, mauve drapes, and kitten-themed knick-knacks,” whispered Dean. “Merlin, I’ll never get it up with those bloody cats yowling at me all the time.”

“This has to stop,” Hermione hissed. “I just saw Marsha nodding her head in agreement!” Harry was jostled suddenly, and he didn’t have to open his eyes to know that Hermione’s hand had shot into the sky as straight and true as it always had at Hogwarts.  
“Hem, _excuse_ me, Ms Granger . . .”

“That’s Ms Granger-Weasley to you,” came Hermione’s icy retort.

“Yes, well, pardon me for thinking you single when you never attend with your husband,” Umbridge replied. A shocked gasp washed over the room. It was an unspoken rule that no one mentioned a member’s marital status – or lack thereof – while within the mansion’s walls.

“That’s it,” Hermione said, clearly fuming. “Malfoy, we have something to announce.”

Harry squinted through his fingers at the podium, but then squeezed his eyes shut again when they encountered a veritable troll in fuchsia latex.

“Sweet Merlin,” he moaned. “Please tell me when it’s over.”

“But honey,” Ginny whispered. “You’re going to have to open your eyes when your candidacy is announced and you have to walk up to the podium.”

Harry groaned. “I can’t do it,” he said. “I can’t, Ginny. Don’t ask this of me!”

Ginny swatted him on the back of the head. Hard.

“You faced Voldemort, you daft twat,” she said. “And you can bloody well face Dolores Umbridge – cat-suit or no cat-suit.”

“Don’t worry, mate,” said Dean, squeezing his shoulder. “We’ll be there with you. It’ll be like the D.A. all over again.”

“Except this time we’ll all be nude,” said Luna. “Well, either nude or wearing nothing but Fwooper feathers and thongs. Although, I’ve noticed no one’s remarked on my Hinkypunk-skin girdle . . .”

“Because you aren’t wearing a Hinkypunk-skin girdle, honey,” Dean said gently. “How many times have we been over this? Hinkypunks aren’t corporeal and thus, by definition, do not have skin.”

Luna sighed the sigh of a long-suffering wife. “Just because you can’t see something, doesn’t mean it’s not there, Dean. I mean, are you insinuating every time Harry put on his Invisibility Cloak, he shed his skin? I don’t think so. If that were true, just think how many Harry-skin garments there’d be on the market. We’d have Harry-skin robes and Harry-skin hats and Harry-skin . . .”

“Let me get this straight, Granger-Weasley. You wish to add _four_ additional candidates?”

“That’s right,” said Hermione, standing up and nudging Harry with her toe. “Harry, Ginny, Dean and myself would like to . . . er, nominate each other for president.”

Malfoy looked nonplussed. “I don’t know,” he said, chewing anxiously on his lower lip. “Adding that many new candidates at this juncture would require a shift from a quorum to a plurality vote, and to do so we’d need to nominate and elect an interim president pro-tem who could then propose the new voting structure . . .”

Harry felt his heart start to pound at an alarming rate. It was clear that he was experiencing symptoms of the post-traumatic stress disorder he’d incurred since last night’s Ravenwood governors’ meeting.

“Hermione,” he hissed. “Please! Make him stop! I’ll do anything, just please no president Umbridge and no voting for a pro-tem quorum or whatever the fuck it is he’s jabbering on about up there!”

“I thought a Quorum was a herd of Horklumps,” Luna whispered. “Why is Draco suggesting we elect a herd of Horklumps? Aside from the hygiene issue, I’ve heard their bites become infected quite easily, and in a situation such as this where there are so many delicate body parts . . .”

“Very well, then,” said Hermione in a voice suggesting that, despite her principled disagreement, she’d be willing to consider a compromise. “How about we put only one candidate forward? Would we need to elect an interim president for that?”

Malfoy stood considering for a long moment. “No, I believe that adding a single candidate would not present any parliamentary irregularities,” he said. “Who’s your candidate then? He or she needs to step forward.”

Hermione looked down at Harry who sat, still covering his face with his hands. Sensing danger, he spread his fingers to peer up at her, but before he could open his mouth and breathe the words _No fucking way, Hermione_ , she’d already said it.

“We nominate Harry Potter,” she announced proudly. “Head Auror, slayer of Dark Lords, and two-time winner of the Southwark condom balloon animal competition.”

Harry groaned.

“Come on, honey,” Ginny chirped. “Go up there. Don’t worry, we’ll all vote for you.”

“You’d better,” he hissed. “Or I’m withdrawing my name from the Saturday night Gryffindor baby-sitting circle.”

“I’ll convey your threat,” Ginny said. “Now go and break a hip.”

“Actually,” said Dean, “it’s break a leg, and it pertains to theatrical productions, not presidential elections.”

“Well, just as long as it’s not his _third_ leg,” Ginny replied.

Harry glowered at the lot of them.

“Any remarks you’d like to make before the vote is called, Potter?” said Malfoy, looking entirely too smug as Harry joined him behind the podium.

“You’ve already bought off three-quarters of the room, haven’t you?” Harry said under his breath as he took his place beside Malfoy. Not so much because he wanted to stand beside Malfoy, but because he wanted all of Malfoy’s six-foot, twelve-stone frame between himself and the cat-suit-clad Umbridge.

“Money and sexual favours go a long way,” Malfoy replied.

“Oi, then why wasn’t I offered a quid pro quo?” Harry said.

Malfoy turned and fixed him with an astonished glance. “Because I’d no idea that you were available to be . . .”

“Quid pro quoed? Well, maybe I’m not, but you at least could have tried.”

A slow grin crawled its way across Malfoy’s face. “I say, Potter. Are you flirting with me?”

Harry looked straight ahead and tried to ignore the hand that Malfoy had let drift away from his side and which was now tracing lazy circles on the back of Harry’s thigh with the tips of its fingers.

“Perhaps,” he said out of the corner of his mouth. “Hurry up and call the vote, and maybe you’ll find out.”

Malfoy stepped forward to the podium with surprising alacrity.

“Ladies and gentlemen, Potter has just informed me that he will forgo his nomination address, as will I because most of you are already familiar with my platform . . .”

“And what a fine platform it is,” came a voice from the back. Clearly, the natives were starting to get restless – a fact that Harry had no trouble inferring by the number of three-ways that had commenced since the start of the meeting.

“Why thank you, Tristan,” Malfoy said with a discreet nod as though he was at the Ministry, and Tristan – or whoever he was – had just complimented him on his oversight of a successful bank merger. “Now, ladies and gentlemen, may we please have a show of hands, or, if your hands are otherwise occupied, a show of feet. Who wishes our new president to be Dolores Umbridge? . . .”

As with every parliamentary undertaking Harry had ever seen Malfoy preside over, the election was endless and tedious and required three do-overs because at least ten people had _both_ their hands and their feet “otherwise occupied” and needed to vote via proxy, which itself required a vote. But at last, when the dust had settled, the Southwark Swingers had a new president.

“Congratulations, Potter,” said Malfoy sourly as he stood clapping his hands in that well-bred farce of an applause he so favoured.

“Huh?” Harry replied. “What? Where am I?”

“You’ve been elected president, you arsehole,” Malfoy answered. “And by one miserable vote, I might add.”

Harry wiped the drool off his chin and grinned. “I’d call that a bloody mandate, wouldn’t you, Malfoy?”

Malfoy scowled. “Hardly,” he said. “And let me guess, you have no idea of what you’ll propose for our next gathering, am I right?”

Harry frowned. “Why do I have to propose something for our next gathering?”

“Because you’re the _president_ , you git,” Malfoy hissed. “And that’s what presidents do. They make proposals . . .”

“Or?”

“Or society devolves into chaos and anarchy,” Malfoy replied. “It’s a heavy responsibility, Potter. A responsibility that I, for one, am not yet convinced you’re up to.”

Harry grinned and reached down to stroke himself. He still hadn’t come, and now seemed like as good a time as any to take Malfoy up on his little quid pro quo hint from before.

“Oh, I’m _up_ to it, Malfoy,” he purred. “The question is, are you?”

He reached for Malfoy’s prick, but to his disappointment, Malfoy turned away.

“I believe,” he said in miffed tones, “that you have a proposal to make.”

“Oh, for fuck sake,” Harry growled. “I’ll just propose that next time we meet we’ll just shag like we always do, how’s that?”

Malfoy looked aggrieved. “I’d hardly call that leadership, Potter,” he said. Harry rolled his eyes. “Look,” Malfoy continued. “Like it or not, you’re in the tenuous position of a narrowly elected leader. Had the Wollsleys not had to leave to take their babysitter home or the Sullivan twins not disappeared to the loo, I’m quite certain it would have been _me_ who was elected, not you.” He paused and moved closer to Harry, until they were standing shoulder to shoulder. “Now,” he said, leaning in conspiratorially, “I can’t say I’m pleased at having been demoted by happenstance to being the power behind the throne . . .”

“What?” Harry squawked, covering his bum with his hands. “Get away from my throne, Malfoy!”

“. . . but I also recognise that there are considerations involved that transcend mere ambition . . .”

Harry shook his head. “You do realise, I hope, that you’re insane.”

“I have the future of this Club to consider. The welfare of my fellow members. I can’t simply abandon them to the caprices of fate and an ill-considered Potter presidency. And thus I will humble myself to offer you unpaid for . . .”

“. . . and unsolicited . . .”

“. . . advice. Think of something that will unite this divided electorate, Potter. Think of something that will bring the three virtually deadlocked constituencies that supported you, myself and Dolores together in peace and harmony. Think of what it is that each of us represents . . .”

“Well, let’s see,” Harry mused. “You represent cucumber sandwiches, watery tea and death by a thousand agenda items. Umbridge represents pink doilies, mewling kittens and naked bloodthirsty sadism. And I represent good old-fashioned get-down-to-business fucking. I hardly see where any of those things overlap . . .” He paused, scratching his chin. “But then again, maybe you’re right, Malfoy.”

Malfoy’s eyes narrowed to suspicious slits. “What do you mean, ‘maybe’?”

But Harry had already made up his mind. He stepped to the podium and cleared his throat.

“Thank you friends, neighbours, colleagues and fellow members of my children’s play groups. Being elected as your president is a great honour. Now I realise that the vote tonight was close, and in light of that closeness, I will extend to you all an olive branch in the form of a proposal for our next gathering. As a gesture of . . .” Harry paused to glance at a scowling Umbridge and swallowed back a mouthful of the curry he’d consumed earlier that evening. “. . . good will to my fellow candidates, my proposal contains something of meaning from all of our campaigns – such as they were. Ladies and gentlemen, next time we gather, which I believe is a fortnight from now, our host will serve cucumber sandwiches and watery tea and everyone – men and women both – will come wearing some item of pink-coloured intimate apparel or dressed as a cat. Good night and God-speed.”

Harry stepped away from the podium to a smattering of baffled applause. Almost everyone, it seemed, had already returned to more rewarding pursuits than waiting for his acceptance speech.

“That, Potter, was the stupidest proposal I’ve ever heard,” said Malfoy. “Which, I assure you, is truly saying something because I have heard _a lot_ of stupid proposals in my day.”

“Yes, and at least half of them were your own,” Harry replied. “Hope you look pretty in pink, Malfoy. Or if not in pink, then in whiskers and a tail.”

 

“Honey, I don’t mean to be critical, but just out of curiosity, what was going through your head up there?”

Ron had just picked them up in his new Vauxhall Vivaro, and they’d spent ten minutes in the car park while he and Hermione argued over which of them should drive. Always a stickler for rules, it’d been Hermione’s position that because Ron hadn’t passed the test yet, she should be the one to take Harry and Ginny home. Ron, however, wasn’t one to go down without a fight as evidenced by the fact that the car park had long since emptied, and yet they were still there.

Harry frowned and turned to look at his wife. “What do you mean?” he said. “I thought it was a brilliant proposal. Makes everyone happy. Malfoy gets his finger sandwiches, Umbridge gets her bloody cats, and I get to . . .”

“What?” Ginny asked. “Fuck Malfoy?” Harry gawped and spluttered, but she held up her hand. “I saw the way you were looking at him tonight, Harry,” she said. “You know you’ve been gagging to do it ever since he and Astoria joined the club last year. What’s stopping you?”

“What’s stopping me,” Harry whispered (this was definitely not a conversation he wanted Ron to overhear) “is the fact that he’s _Malfoy_.”

Ginny rolled her eyes and rooted around in her purse for her compact. “Precisely,” she said, flipping open the little mirror and peeling off her false eyelashes. “You’ve been obsessing over Malfoy for _years_ , Harry.”

“Exactly what I said to him myself,” said Ron as he and Hermione performed complicated manoeuvres as they tried to swap seats without getting out. “Just the other day, in fact.”

Harry crossed his arms over his chest and glowered at the lot of them.

“Oh, come on, sweetie,” Ginny said, smoothing a placating hand through his hair. “What’s all the fuss? I shagged Malfoy and survived.”

“As did I,” said Hermione, starting the engine and putting the Vivaro in reverse.

“What?!?” Harry and Ron cried in unison.

“Mmm, and it was rather nice, too,” said Ginny, using her wand to remove her lipstick and eye shadow. “He’s quite well-endowed for a man that looked so anaemic and underfed when we were at school.”

“You could just as well be describing our Harry when _he_ was in school,” Hermione said. “I feel sorry for teenaged boys. Puberty is just so cruel. I mean, look at what poor Teddy went through with all those spots. It’s a good thing he inherited his mother’s . . .”

“You slept with Malfoy?” Harry said in a tiny voice.

“Ah ah!” Hermione admonished, pointing her finger at him in the rear view mirror. “Remember the Club’s rules? We shag other people at the club. But we _sleep_ with our spouses.”

Harry pressed his lips in a thin line.

“Harry, honey,” Ginny said cajolingly. “What’re you so upset about? You’ve never been jealous of any of the men at the club before.”

“Any men aren’t Malfoy,” Harry said stubbornly, uncertain in his own mind why it bothered him so much.

“Maybe it isn’t Malfoy he’s jealous of,” said Ron, twisting in his seat to look at them. “Maybe it’s _you_ , Gin.”

The three of them laughed heartily at Ron’s joke, and then thankfully the conversation drifted onto other topics, but Harry never quite regained his buoyantly good mood. It wasn’t until he took a shower and climbed into bed beside a softly snoring Ginny that it occurred to him why that was.

Maybe, just maybe, Ron had been right.

 

Aside from James’s unfortunate mishap with a renegade garden gnome at the Burrow, which resulted in a four-hour visit to St. Mungo’s on Sunday afternoon, Harry’s weekend passed uneventfully – albeit far too quickly. Monday morning, however, found him sitting bleary-eyed and irascible in Malfoy’s office with an (apparently) “egregiously aggrieved” Tiddlewick. Needless to say, it was not an auspicious indicator of how the rest of his week was likely to go.

“Tea, Potter?”

Harry grunted and nodded at his acorn-cap teacup.

“Mr Tiddlewick?”

“No thank you, Mr Malfoy. I’m too distraught for beverages.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “Care to tell me what this is about, Malfoy?” he asked. “My people apprehended the leaders of a necromancy ring over the weekend, and we’ve got hours of interrogation ahead of us. Every minute I spend on the Tiddlywink matter jeopardises our national security.”

“My name is _Tiddlewick_ ,” said Tiddlewick.

Malfoy leaned back in his enormous (and enormously expensive) leather chair, resting his hands magnanimously on the armrests in a way which, to Harry’s mind at least, made him look less like the Minister’s counsel than the Minister himself. Harry scowled.

“It has come to my attention, Potter, that the Auror Office appears to partake in discriminatory recruitment processes, and I’ve brought us together this morning to see if we can facilitate an agreement that will limit the potential fallout to both the department and yourself as its head.” He smiled blandly and crossed his legs. Harry pressed his lips into a vanishingly thin line.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said. “Tiddlywink is treated just as poorly and humiliatingly as . . . ow!!” Harry clapped his hand over his eyes. “What the fuck, Malfoy? Are you trying to _blind_ me or something? I thought we all agreed to give our wands to your secretary for this meeting!”

Malfoy started and then looked momentarily abashed. “My apologies,” he said, pulling the sleeves of his robes down over his wrists. “I had Tiddlywink shine my diamond cufflinks earlier, and they must’ve thrown a reflection from the lamp into your eyes . . .”

“Pardon, sir? I don’t believe I did any such thing . . .” Tiddlewick sputtered. “And my name is Tiddlewick . . .”

Harry rubbed his watering eyes and settled his glasses back on his nose. “I can’t believe you’re on my case about a little healthy intradepartmental hazing when you have the recruits polishing your cufflinks.”

Malfoy rolled his eyes heavenwards. “Shut it, both of you!” he snapped. “I spent the entire weekend with my insufferable in-laws, and I am not in the mood to referee frivolous disputes. Tiddlewick, I _know_ your name isn’t Tiddlywink. Tiddlywink is the name of my house-elf, which, I trust, Potter, explains to your satisfaction why he was shining my cufflinks. Now, I’ve drafted a proposed agreement governing the remainder of Tiddlewick’s apprenticeship and setting out the express conditions of his continued employment. Potter, why don’t you review it and make any suggested revisions before noon on Wednesday.”

Harry stood up. “Sorry, Malfoy,” he said. “Not a chance. I’ve got four people in holding cells downstairs who may or may not know the location of a missing family. I’ve simply no time to let you crawl up my arse with a microscope, and if Tiddlywink knows what’s good for him, he’ll drop this silly nonsense and get his apprentice arse back to the second floor.”

“See what I mean?!” Tiddlewick squawked. “It’s a hostile work environment, I tell you!”

Malfoy uncrossed his legs and wordlessly summoned a volume from the bookshelf behind Harry’s head. Fortunately, Harry had excellent peripheral instincts and ducked at the last second.

“You almost concussed the Head Auror,” he said. “That seems rather unwise.”

Malfoy reached into his desk drawer, removed a pair of silver-framed reading glasses and opened them with an elegant flick of his wrist before settling them on his irritatingly handsome nose. He then commenced to read as though Harry and Tiddlewick had already departed. The implication that the meeting had ended was abundantly clear.

“Rendering you unconscious, Potter,” he said without glancing up, “would make the examination of your colon with a miserscope far easier, not to mention pleasant.”

“It’s a ‘microscope,’ not ‘miserscope,’ sir,” Tiddlewick interjected helpfully. Malfoy glanced up from his book and fixed him with the patented Malfoy look.

“I believe our business this morning has concluded,” he said. “You’ve already reviewed the agreement and given your approval, Tiddlewick. It is now in Potter’s no-doubt competent, if lackadaisical, hands. Until he has an opportunity to go over it, there is nothing further we can accomplish. How much time do you require, Potter?”

Harry scratched his head distractedly. His life was inordinately busy these days between the recent upsurge in criminal and other nefarious activity, the apprentices’ qualification exams, and all the stupid organisations he’d been hoodwinked, roped into and otherwise brow-beaten to join. Not to mention the fact that he was trying to spend as much of his free time as possible with Albus before he left in September for his first year at Hogwarts . . .

“Er, a fortnight?” he suggested. “That should give me enough time.”

Malfoy looked incredulous. “Well, I should hope so,” he said, clearly unimpressed. “That agreement is all of thirty pages.”

Harry glanced down at the document Malfoy had levitated on to his lap with alarm. “Sweet Jupiter,” he exclaimed. “What on earth is _in_ that thing?”

Malfoy frowned. “Nothing out of the ordinary,” he said. “Just standard legal language . . .”

“Ah,” said Harry wearily. “Say no more.”

Malfoy shook his head and returned to reading his book.

“A fortnight, then?” Harry said.

“Fine,” Malfoy bit out without looking up. “But no extensions. And you also have that report on the steps you’ll be taking to bring your department in line with the new interrogation protocol . . .”

“Yeah, yeah,” Harry replied. “I’ll have that for you in a fortnight as well. Come on, Tiddlywink. Back to work. Later, Malfoy.”

“As you say, Potter,” Malfoy replied, still without looking up.

A fact that caused Harry far more consternation than it should have.

 

“Sweetie?” Ginny said, leaning towards him and whispering out of the corner of her mouth.

“Mmm?” Harry replied. She’d interrupted his count of the dead flies in the overhead lights, and now he’d have to start from the beginning. Again.

“Have you decided yet?”

“Whether we should let Albus smuggle a broom into school? I thought we agreed that because we’d forbidden James from doing it, we’d have to treat Al the same. I know he doesn’t present the same concerns as James did, having at least a modicum of self-preservation instinct, but all the same, I think . . .”

“No, no, no,” Ginny said. “Not about that, about what you’re going to wear to the Southwark this Friday. Are you going to go for the kitty look or pink frills?”

Harry frowned. “I don’t recall frills being a part of my proposal. If I remember correctly . . .”

He paused, suddenly aware of the silence emanating from the table where the officers of the Belgravia Garden and Topiary Committee sat in all their chart, graph, report and agenda-laden glory.

“It would appear that the Potters have something to contribute,” said their president. “Or not, as the case may be.”

“Er, not really,” Harry replied. “Carry on, Malfoy. I believe you were discussing the benefits of bay laurel over myrtle, if I’m not mistaken.”

Looking as close to impressed as he ever looked, except, of course, when he was watching his own cock thrusting in the cunt of a buxom hog-tied witch, Malfoy nodded and returned to the report he’d been reading from.

“As I was saying,” he continued, “being dioecious, bay laurel has unisexual reproductive units, permitting it to propagate itself. This would save us the approximately 350 Galleons per year we currently pay Longbottom, Carpels & Stamen, LLP, for pollinating services . . . ”

“Wow, I’m impressed,” Ginny whispered, as soon as she was convinced Malfoy was no longer paying attention to them. “I would’ve sworn you hadn’t been listening to a word he’d said all evening.”

Harry blushed. In fact, he _hadn’t_ been listening to Malfoy – that is until Malfoy had said the words, “bisexual flowers with showy petals,” at which point he’d been all ears (and all half-swollen cock as well). Maybe Ginny and Hermione were right. Maybe he _was_ just a tad obsessed with Malfoy. Or at least with the idea of cracking that decorous shell Malfoy wore at all times, even when he was fucking said buxom witch. There simply _had_ to be something that one could do to the punctilious prat that would get him to break a sweat . . .

“Well?” Ginny said. “Which is it going to be? Kitty-cats or pink doilies? I think I’m going the pink route, myself. I found the most fabulous pink négligée when I went shopping after my Housewives Who Hex luncheon the other day.”

What was Malfoy going to wear? Harry wondered. Despite having seen Malfoy in everything from a metal-studded leather harness to a latex corset and thigh-high boots, Harry found it difficult imagining him dressed up as a cat. Let alone wearing something pink. Harry held up his agenda to hide his smile at the mere thought. Malfoy was the least likely person to wear pink that Harry knew. Even Ron had a pink Muggle polo shirt, and Seamus had a pink tie he always wore when getting together with Macmillan and Finch-Fletchley (insinuating – in an embarrassingly obvious way that always made Harry cringe – that wearing a pink piece of cloth around his neck practically made him one of Ernie and Justin’s gay brothers-in-arms). But Harry had never seen Malfoy in anything but blue, black, green, white and seemingly infinite permutations of grey. Even Malfoy’s fetish wear had an aura of well-bred masculine respectability. Harry was going to put his money on pussy over pink for Malfoy. All he could hope for now was a cat-suit. He smiled dopily and slid down in his seat.

“Honey, you’re drooling again,” Ginny whispered, handing him a tissue from her handbag after first extracting from it a hard sweet she must have confiscated from Lily at some point that afternoon. Harry accepted it gratefully and went back to counting dead flies. As far as the state of his trousers were concerned, dead flies would be far less likely than the thought of Malfoy in a cat-suit to render them sticky and far too tight for comfort.

 

The time passed with unendurable slowness, but at last their next Southwark Friday rolled around.

“I’ll drop the kids off at Bill and Fleur’s place after supper,” Ginny called from the bathroom where she was trying, simultaneously, to apply mascara and _Scourgify_ Al’s robes clean of cat sick. Harry stuck his head in the door, one hand clutching his briefcase and the other making a half-hearted attempt to straighten the knot of his tie.

“Shall I just meet you there, then, if I can’t make it home in time?” he asked.

“That’d be grand,” Ginny replied. “Albus Severus! Stop squirming this instant!”

“Bye, Daddy!” Lily called from the living room where she was watching another insipid Muggle DVD. Harry stuck his head in that door as well.

“It’s a beautiful summer day out there,” he said. “Are you really going to spend it _Petrified_ by that idiot box?”

Lily rolled her eyes. “Maybe,” she said. Harry drew his wand, shut off the telly with a flick and Levitated the remote control from the coffee table into his hand. “Wrong answer,” he said.

“Dad!!!” Lily wailed, drawing out the one syllable into at least five. “That’s not fair!”

Harry crammed the remote into his briefcase and headed for the Floo, feeling only slightly guilty that he was leaving Ginny with not only a sick cat but a righteously pissed off nine-year-old. He’d make it up to her later by purchasing her an hour with the Southwark’s finest “Internal Masseuse” that evening. He made a mental note to owl Madge, the club’s scheduling secretary, as soon as he got to the office.

 

“I don’t know why Hermione asked me to give these to you,” said Ron, handing Harry his daughter’s pair of cat ears on a plastic hairband that she’d worn one Halloween as part of her Professor McGonagall costume. “And what’s more, I don’t want to know.”

Harry accepted them with a grin and a wink and stuffed them in his briefcase beside the purloined remote. “What do we have scheduled for today?” he asked. “I want to be sure we’ve got everything wrapped up so that I can be out of here no later than seven . . .”

“Why, of course, Potter,” came the smirk-laden drawl from the doorway behind him. “We wouldn’t want Auror business getting in the way of your other . . . pursuits, after all.”

Harry glared at Malfoy. “I don’t have it yet,” he said, cutting right to the chase. “I told you I needed a fortnight and that was as of Monday, not Friday.”

Malfoy hid a polite, but no less snide, little yawn behind his hand. “Fine, Potter,” he said. “I’m not here for your report and agreement, anyway. I’m here to meet with Weasley on Assistant Head Auror business . . .”

“Super secret and important Assistant Head Auror business,” Ron added by way of clarification.

Harry rolled his eyes. “Fine,” he replied snippily. “It’s a good thing, too, because I have lots to do today, and I don’t have time to take tea and talk legal nonsense.” He hoped that he sounded nonchalant and not at all disappointed that he couldn’t spend even just a little while watching Malfoy and trying to imagine what he might be wearing under his conservatively tailored grey pashmina robes. Was it a skin-tight latex cat-suit that squeaked ever so slightly every time Malfoy crossed and uncrossed his long legs? And if it was, how would Malfoy’s crotch look in it? Would the suit be so form-fitting as to cause the seam to perfectly separate his balls, one on either side? Would his cock lie against his thigh, or would it point straight up, and even more importantly, would it be half-hard from the constant pressure, the constant promise of what was to come . . .

Why was it that the _one_ time he actually _wanted_ to spend a morning in a meeting with Malfoy was the one time he didn’t have to? Clearly, there was yet another obscure ancient deity he’d unwittingly pissed off.

“Malfoy and I are going to use the conference room, okay, boss?”

Harry waved them away. “Yeah, yeah,” he said dismissively, thumbing through the stack of parchment he’d retrieved from his inbox.

“I’ll join you in just a moment, Weasley,” Malfoy said. “Just need to visit the gents’ first. Can you point me in the right direction, Potter?”

Harry’s head snapped to attention. “Er,” he said. “No problem. Follow me.” His heart pounding, he led Malfoy down a corridor, around a corner, and down another corridor. After all, if this was what he _thought_ it might be, only a private loo would do. A _very_ private loo.

“Hhmmm,” Malfoy said when they at last arrived at the one single-toilet facility on the whole second floor. “I’m beginning to see why your people always look so harried, Potter. They’re all trying to hold their bladders.” He paused and Harry paused with him, his mouth going dry with anticipation, as Malfoy reached into his dragon-hide briefcase. What was it going to be? A collar? A cock ring, perhaps? Harry felt his prick start to thicken as Malfoy slowly removed his hand to reveal . . .

. . . a leather bound log of some type. Harry frowned as he opened it and jotted down the words, _maintains unsatisfactory number of urinals and requires employees to make a burdensome trek to distant outlying latrine . . ._.

“Oh, for Chrissake, Malfoy!” he said. “You’re not really taking Tiddlywink’s hostile work environment complaint seriously, are you? The bloke’s a useless twat of the highest order. Not that I _am_ trying to drive him out of apprentice training, but if I was, I’d be doing him – and the department – a favour. He’s not Auror material, Malfoy. He’s . . .”

Malfoy closed his log and fixed Harry with a challenging gaze. “He’s what, Potter? Paper-pusher material? Solicitor material? Come on, why don’t you just come out and say it? You think I’m a patsy, and that’s why you rigged things tonight to _force_ me to wear pink and confirm all your suspicions about me. Well, let me tell you, just because I believe in order and a few basic rules, doesn’t mean I’m any less of a man.”

Harry gaped at him. “What on earth are you on about?” he said.

“What I’m _on_ about, as you put it,” Malfoy replied, jabbing his perfectly manicured finger at Harry’s chest, “is that you don’t respect me, Potter. You never have, and you never will. No matter how many Knights of the Order of This or That I accrue. No matter on how many boards of directors of important charities or prominent institutions I sit. No matter that I live in a townhouse two doors down from yours. No matter that our sons will be attending the same school. No matter, even, that I’ve fucked your wife and your best friend’s wife, I’m _still_ deserving of your disrespect. Your obvious boredom at the meetings I chair. Your blatant eye-rolling at the events I organise. And tonight was just going to be your perfect opportunity to mock me and everything I stand for . . .”

Harry was vaguely aware that his jaw had actually – and quite literally – hit his collarbone. Through all the absurdity Malfoy had just spewed, one thing was perfectly crystalline and horribly clear:

“What do you mean tonight _was_ going to be my perfect opportunity?” he asked. “Why isn’t it still going to be?”

Malfoy glared at him. “I thought as much,” he said stonily. “And it’s rather a shame, too, because I’d begun to imagine there for a fleeting moment that I might actually have a chance to . . . prove to you that you were wrong about me. But alas. Now, if you’ll please excuse me . . .”

Without pausing to think, Harry grabbed the sleeve of Malfoy’s robes as he turned to push open the door to the loo. They stood for a long moment, both staring in stunned surprise at Harry’s hand, with its chewed nails and broom handle calluses and the paint he’d splattered helping James with his model train set the night before, as it clutched the priceless fabric as though it was the last thing that stood between Harry and a fathomless drop.

“Don’t,” Harry said huskily.

Malfoy raised his eyes to Harry’s. They were narrow with suspicion and enmity.

“Don’t leave the Southwark.”

Malfoy shook his sleeve out of Harry’s grasp. “Too late, Potter,” he replied. “Astoria and I already Owled our membership relinquishment forms this morning.”

“Send another owl saying you didn’t mean it,” Harry growled. He knew he must sound oddly desperate, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. Not now that he’d acknowledged what he needed. Not now that he saw that they _both_ needed it.

“Be there,” he said, his voice low and gravelly and catching on the edges of the sudden violent need he felt surge in him. “Tonight. I don’t give a fuck if you don’t want to dress like a cat or wear pink. Sod it. All I want is for you to be there, Malfoy.”

Malfoy’s eyes grew from slits to saucers in the space of an instant, and Harry couldn’t help but notice, either, that the pupils were blown. He felt a sense of exhilaration course through him at this – the smallest of hints of what an out-of-control Malfoy might look like. _This is what the start of an addiction feels like_ , he thought with the part of his brain that was still clear and clinical. _Exactly like this_.

“You will come tonight,” Harry said, well aware of the connotations in his word choice. Malfoy pinked ever so slightly. “And we will do whatever you want, Malfoy. Whatever you _need_ for me to show you that I don’t disrespect you. I may not see the world the way you do, and you do sometimes bore me within an inch of my life with letter slots and quorums and oversight committees, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t respect you. I _know_ what you did after the War, Malfoy. I know you provided the Aurors with the evidence needed to secure the convictions of more than a dozen Death Eaters. I know you voluntarily turned over three-quarters of your family’s wealth for reparations and rebuilding, and I know that since then you have earned everything that you have with your own sweat, ink and hot air . . .”

Malfoy’s lovely blown-pupilled eyes narrowed back into slits again.

“. . . What I’m trying to say, though no doubt badly, is that I admire what you’ve done. And even though it may not always seem that way, I admire _you_ , Draco. You’re no longer the arrogant prat I would’ve killed to have seen humiliated in a pair of pink schoolgirl knickers. I can assure you, that is _not_ why I made that daft proposal.”

Malfoy leaned forward until his lips almost brushed against Harry’s cheek as he spoke. “If I’m no longer someone you want to see humiliated, Potter, than what _am_ I? Someone you’d be willing to humiliate _yourself_ to possess? If only for a night?”

Harry swallowed audibly around the lump of anticipation and desire he felt lodge itself in his throat.

“Come tonight,” he whispered back, inhaling the scent of Malfoy’s expensive aftershave, “and you’ll find out.”

 

“Hail, El Presidente!” Dean called from the paddle rack where he stood with Luna, Ginny and Hermione. Trying to quiet his heart, which had begun to pound alarmingly the moment he stepped through the door, Harry grabbed a handful of condoms from the bowl and made his way across the room.

“Hiya, Harry,” Hermione said, handing him a drink. “Ron wasn’t still there when you left, was he?”

“Yeah, but he was just heading out the Floo as well. One of the apprentices caught a rebounding Chia Pet spell, and we had to spend most of the afternoon trying to find a counter-spell.”

“Here, sweetie, turn towards me for a second,” Ginny said, reaching up to adjust Rose’s kitty-ears headband that he’d tried, clearly unsuccessfully, to don without the aid of a mirror.

“What’s a Chia Pet spell?” Dean asked. “It doesn’t _sound_ all that gruesome.”

“Try telling that to the person with bean sprouts growing out of every orifice,” said Harry. “It’s serious stuff, mate. Nothing to make light of.”

Dean grinned and held up his glass in a toast. “Glad it was you and Ron dealing with it then,” he said.

“Yeah,” Harry replied. “That’s why we make the big bucks.”

Ginny rolled her eyes. “Hey, Dad raised a family of seven on his government salary. You’ve only got three.”

“Yeah, but none of you had James’s tastes in Muggle models or Albus’s tastes in books or Lily’s tastes in . . . well, in just about everything. With kids as expensive as they are these days, we’re lucky to have a pot to piss in . . .”

“Oh, speaking of which,” Luna interjected. “They’ve reopened the Watersports Room. I’m trying to decide whether I should start there or end there. What do you think, dear?” she asked, turning to Dean.

Having no interest in getting peed on (or peeing on anyone else, for that matter), Harry tuned out the debate and focused on his main concern of the evening, namely, whether Malfoy would show up. He glanced around, scanning the room for Malfoy’s pale blond head. Everywhere he looked, people were dressed as cats or in pink and some people had even gone all-out and were dressed as pink cats. It was remarkable actually, he found himself thinking, the way that an idea he’d basically pulled out of his arse under duress had become a mandate followed by dozens. Watching a couple walk by who looked like escapees from the Muggle show _Cats_ (the only difference being the level of attention they’d paid to anatomical detail), Harry reached up self-consciously and adjusted his decidedly unambitious ears.

“Honey, Hermione and I are heading to the three-way room,” said Ginny, squeezing his arm affectionately. “Where will you be so I know where to look for you when it’s time to go home? You remember that Fleur’s sister is due to go into labour at any minute, and she and Bill need us to pick up the kids before midnight, right?”

Harry nodded and glanced distractedly at the grandfather clock by the front door, which announced not only the hour but whether a newly arrived guest had a sexually transmitted disease. Harry had heard from someone that the clock had been Malfoy’s idea when he’d discovered a loophole in the defamation laws barring a finding of liability when the slanderer was, in fact, an inanimate object.

“Shit,” he said under his breath. “It’s nine o’clock already, and he’s not here.”

Ginny frowned. “Who’s not here?” she asked. “Do you mean Malfoy?”

Harry noted that Hermione ducked her head to hide a smile, but before he could enquire as to what on earth was going on, Ginny slipped her arm through his and pointed up the broad marble staircase to the door of a room that Harry had never noticed before. 

“He’s up there,” Ginny said, giving Harry an encouraging nudge. Harry swallowed and stared at the plain, unassuming door behind which was . . . well, he had no idea, actually, given his and Malfoy’s encounter that morning.

“I take it that’s where I’ll be able to find you later?” Ginny purred provocatively. Harry, whose mouth was still too dry and sandpapery to speak, merely nodded. “Go get him, tiger,” she said, patting his head between his pointy kitty ears.

Before he knew it (and, if he were being honest with himself, before he was ready), Harry was standing in front of the door Ginny had pointed out to him and reaching for the cool brass of its doorknob. Taking a deep breath, he stepped into the chamber, blinking as his eyes grew accustomed to the low lighting. At first, he could see nothing except the two curtained windows in the far wall, but after a couple of seconds, he noticed the figure that stood between them, leaning back – with one foot braced behind him and a wine glass in his hand.

“Malfoy,” Harry said. “You came.”

Malfoy made no move towards him, but Harry saw his teeth gleam when he smiled. He was dressed in long black robes and his customary unembellished black satin eye mask.

“Shouldn’t that be ‘meow’?” he said, tipping his chin at Harry’s head. “You look fetching in nothing but a mask and cat ears, Potter.”

Harry walked towards him slowly, holding his hands in a gesture of placation as though Malfoy were a wild and unpredictable animal, which at any moment might attack or, worse still, flee.

“I see you, yourself, bucked the rules,” Harry said, sweeping his eyes over Malfoy’s sombrely and excessively clothed body. “I’m surprised, Malfoy,” he said. “I wouldn’t have pegged you as a rule-breaker.”

On the last word, Harry suddenly found himself chest to chest with Malfoy, breathing in Malfoy’s scent and feeling the scratchiness of the wool of his robes against the sensitive head of his very erect penis. Slowly, he reached out to rest his hands on Malfoy’s shoulders, but Malfoy was too quick and eluded him at just the last second, slipping beneath Harry’s outstretched arm and moving to stand in the centre of the small room next to the single candle guttering in its holder on the floor.

“Let it never be said that Draco Malfoy bucks the rules,” Malfoy said, turning and, at the same time, shrugging off his robes in a single fluid gesture. They pooled around his feet, and Harry’s eyes, which had followed their descent, rose slowly. From Malfoy’s ankles, to his long muscular calves, to his thighs, to the . . .

“Sweet Aphrodite,” Harry breathed and dropped shamelessly to his knees in an aspect of worship.

“Have you any idea how difficult it is, Potter, for a man without a daughter to procure a pair of plain pink nylon panties?”

Harry made a gurgling noise of which he knew he should probably be embarrassed but just couldn’t muster the effort.

“You . . . you . . . you . . .” he babbled, aware that he was literally – _literally_ – salivating. “You’re wearing pink . . .”

“. . . schoolgirl knickers, yes, I am, Potter. And are you aware that almost every time I see you, you’re drooling? You should really get that checked out. It could be indicative of a serious medical condition.”

“Guh,” said Harry, still on his knees and reaching with one hand like a thirst-parched Cary Grant in _Gunga Din._ “Guh.” 

At some point between his stint as a diffident Death Eater and the morning three years ago when he and Harry had emerged from the doors of their Belgravia townhouses wearing nothing but pyjamas to retrieve their morning _Prophets_ and realised they were neighbours, Malfoy had grown. And though Harry was somewhat reluctant to use the term “statuesque” (because, really, how cheesy), there was no doubt that Malfoy had the longest, leanest body that Harry had ever seen. It was a shame, really, that instead of paying him to be a fussy, fastidious, sub-section-drafting, conservative prick, someone wasn’t paying him to walk around naked all day.

Or better yet, to walk around in cheap, decidedly unsexy, pink knickers.

“I think I may be undergoing a religious conversion,” Harry said. “Come here and let me touch you so I can be sure you’re not a trance-induced hallucination.”

Malfoy smiled and shook his head. “Oh no, Potter,” he said. “I believe you told me that if I came here tonight that you would do whatever I asked.”

“And I will,” said Harry. “Anything. Anything at all. Just as long as it involves me pulling those knickers aside and fucking you two ways to Tuesday.”

Malfoy laughed. “Oh no, Potter,” he said, shaking his head. “We are going to go about this in an orderly and dignified fashion. And just to ensure that happens, I’m going to ask you go over there and kneel in front of that wall, facing inwards into the room.”

Ordinarily, this would have been the moment in an encounter when Harry said a polite, “thanks, but no thanks,” and slipped out of the room. Dom/sub stuff wasn’t his thing. Nor was bondage. In his opinion, he already had to deal with enough mind games every day in his job; the last thing he wanted to do was engage in them at the Southwark. But at this point, with Malfoy’s cock straining the seams of those knickers and his chest already gleaming with perspiration, Harry would have done anything. Including volunteer for the Topiary Design Committee and the Letter Slot Installation Team.

“Like this?” he asked, kneeling as Malfoy instructed with his back about three feet from the wall.

“Just like that,” Malfoy purred, and before Harry could ask, “what next?” cords emerged from what Harry had assumed was the empty hole in the wall where a Muggle electrical socket had been. Quickly but gently, they secured his wrists behind him.

“That permits you some range of motion,” Malfoy said. “But you’ll be unable to stand or touch me with your hands. So I suggest, Potter, that you get creative with your mouth.”

Harry moaned and swallowed back the saliva that suddenly flooded his mouth at the prospect of tasting Malfoy.

“Merlin,” Malfoy murmured. He was standing in front of Harry but just an inch out of reach, his groin perfectly level with Harry’s face. “You’re fucking gagging for it, aren’t you, Potter?”

Failing to see the use in denying it, Harry merely nodded.

“Why has it taken us so long and me nearly leaving the club to bring us to this place, this moment?” Malfoy mused, rolling his hips forward just enough for Harry to touch the very tip of his tongue to the nylon stretched over Malfoy’s erection. Above him, Malfoy moaned.

“Now, now,” he admonished. “We have an agenda to follow here. If we’re going to make this last a long, _long_ time, then you can’t start with my cock, Potter. Here, lower yourself down so that you’re sitting on the backs of your calves. There you go. That’s it.”

Harry tilted his head back as Malfoy moved to straddle his face.

“We’re going to start with my balls, Potter. First the left and then the right. Nice and orderly now. This is all about thoroughness and due diligence.”

As usual, Malfoy might still be talking, but Harry had long since stopped listening. After all, who cared what Malfoy was going on about when he was standing, legs spread, with his crotch cradled in pink nylon suspended above Harry’s mouth like a bunch of grapes being fed by a nymph to some Olympian god. The silken bulge was easily the hottest thing that Harry had encountered since joining the Southwark. Clearly, Malfoy was sporting a pair of respectable bollocks – a fact which Harry had to acknowledge was likely to colour his perception of Malfoy’s professional demeanour from that point forwards. He swallowed, just remembering the fastidious way Malfoy tended to cross and uncross his legs during a meeting. No wonder. With balls that perfectly full and hung, he’d want to ensure their comfort. In fact, Harry wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that Malfoy had taken out an accidental damage policy on them. Merlin, they were works of art! Stuffed remorselessly inside the straining satiny material and so swollen and taut against the flat of Harry’s tongue.

Losing himself utterly to the moment, Harry did his best to caress every millimetre of imprisoned flesh. First, with his tongue and then with his lips and his entire mouth, Harry nudged and suckled and lapped at Malfoy’s balls like a starving man until the crotch-area of the knickers was soaked through. Fuck, he tasted good. Even through the thin layer of nylon, Harry could smell the musk of his arousal, and it drove him wild like an animal in rutting season. Again and again, his lips felt out the shape of a testicle through the panties and worked it as far into his mouth as he could get it, while all the time, his tongue traced and licked and stroked. On either side of his head, Harry was vaguely aware that Malfoy’s thighs were trembling, and once, when he opened his eyes to get his bearings, he saw that Malfoy was leaning forward and bracing his hands on the wall above Harry’s head.

“Fuck,” Malfoy groaned. “Oh Fuck, Potter. I’m going to come and you haven’t even touched my cock. What have I told you about jumping over agenda items?” he panted, holding Harry’s head still with a fistful of hair. “ _Fuck_!”

“Turn around,” Harry said.

Malfoy stepped away and looked down at him with a deeply sceptical expression on his face.

“Why?” he asked.

Harry grinned, not surprised in the slightest to learn that Malfoy had never had his arse rimmed. “You’ll see,” he purred, making the most of his feline disguise. “Come here, Malfoy.”

Malfoy stood regarding him for a moment, and Harry, confident in his belief that Malfoy would eventually comply, took a moment to assess the product of all his hard work. The knickers were a pale petal-pink, except for the crotch, which was now dark from Harry’s ministrations, and the spot in the front where the head of Malfoy’s cock lay pinned against his belly, the pre-ejaculate having seeped into the nylon there in a dark Galleon-sized stain. Letting his gaze slide slowly upwards, Harry noted that Malfoy’s chest was flushed and gleaming, and his throat was covered in a mottled rash. On the back of his neck, his hair clung in sweaty tendrils, and his mouth was swollen and bitten looking. In short, he looked thoroughly – and deliciously – debauched.

“Come here, Malfoy,” Harry growled.

Stepping forward, Malfoy positioned himself yet again with his groin within an inch from Harry’s face, flooding Harry’s senses with the overwhelming scent of his arousal and the fluid that was leaking from his cock almost continuously now. Harry was fairly certain that if he touched Malfoy’s prick at that moment, he would come.

“Now, who’s gagging for it?” Harry murmured. “Ready to skip ahead of your quote-unquote agenda yet?”

“Not a chance, Potter,” Malfoy growled, his voice low and guttural and almost not sounding like Malfoy at all. Slowly, he turned around, and Harry moaned as he encountered, for the first time up close, a glimpse of Malfoy’s perfect arse. Above him, Malfoy laughed.

“I’d heard our president is an arse man,” he said. “Good to know mine measures up.”

And indeed it did. Exquisitely proportioned, it even featured little blooms of the softest pink on each cheek that complemented the knickers only partially covering them. Gently, teasingly, Harry drew the tip of his nose along the creases where Malfoy’s buttocks met the backs of his thighs and smiled when he felt Malfoy shiver in response.

“Spread your legs,” Harry said. “Yes, just like that. Now reach down and hook your fingers under the elastic in the leg bands and move it in a little bit. Not so much. There, that’s it.”

After shifting the knickers, Harry saw that the elastic had bitten into the ripe swell of Malfoy’s arse, leaving angry red lines. Leaning forwards as far as his bonds would permit, he lovingly bathed the length of each crease with his tongue, tracing them with tiny kisses, like pearls strung on a thread. And all the while he breathed deeply, drawing in the almost hidden scent of the treasure that lay beneath the knickers bunched slightly in the crack of Malfoy’s arse.

“Oh,” Malfoy breathed, as though in surprise at Harry’s worshipful tenderness, and something in Harry suddenly snapped. Unable to wait a second longer, he licked his way back towards the place he longed to taste and plunged his tongue against Malfoy’s hole, fighting against the silky barrier to feel the spasms he knew he’d find there.

“Fuck,” he moaned as Malfoy surrendered the last bit of reluctance he still retained and ground his arse against Harry’s face, humping Harry’s tongue like . . . well, like a cat in heat. As much fun as the knickers were, Harry was starting to curse them for preventing him full access to that pleading orifice so obviously aching to be plundered and filled.

“Spread yourself for me,” he commanded, and Malfoy complied immediately, opening himself with both hands and shoving his arse in Harry’s face.

“I’m beginning to see,” Malfoy panted, “why Astoria is so fond of the Rim Room. And there I was . . . _oh!_ . . . thinking it was because of its lovely view of the garden.”

Harry chuckled softly into the wet folds of nylon before focusing every last ounce of concentration on seeking out the slight indentation that was Malfoy’s anus. “Relax, Malfoy,” he murmured, and the instant he felt Malfoy comply, the little Sickle-sized knot pulsed in a spasm of pleasure, and the tip of Harry’s tongue squeezed inside despite the barrier between them.

Without a doubt, he’d have a sore tongue in the morning – and probably for a few days after that, but it would’ve been worth it to Harry if he was rendered speechless for a month because once Malfoy had relaxed enough to permit his body to respond, it simply did not stop. Over and over and over and over, Malfoy’s anus convulsed around the tip of Harry’s tongue, opening wide for an instant as though to draw him in to the root and then squeezing down hard around a full-body shudder of sensation. As many arses as he’d rimmed during his time at the Southwark, Harry had never rimmed an arse like Malfoy’s before. Maybe it was the security of having the barrier between them, or the sense of urgency and oh-my-god-almostness, but Harry had never had anyone fuck themselves on his tongue like Malfoy was doing.

“Oh, god! Oh, fuck,” Malfoy whimpered from somewhere above, but Harry was only vaguely aware of the words Malfoy was speaking, so engrossed was he in giving Malfoy the rim job of a lifetime. Everything in the world had condensed itself into the upside-down triangle of cheap pink nylon barely covering the quaking swell of Malfoy’s buttocks and the deep wet cleft between them with its ravenous little hole. If Harry could have opened his mouth wide enough to devour the entire tableau, he would have. In a heartbeat.

“Harry! I’m going to come!” Malfoy cried, sounding almost panicked, and Harry backed off just enough to see that he’d reached into the front of his knickers and was ruthlessly squeezing the base of his cock in a no-doubt futile effort to prevent the inevitable.

“Quick, turn around, Malfoy,” he growled. “Hurry up, turn around!”

Without even having the chance to move his knickers out of the way, Malfoy turned and thrust his pelvis into Harry’s face. Grabbing Harry’s head in both hands, he rutted frantically in a search for Harry’s mouth, and within a mere second of Harry closing his lips around the tip of his prick, he was coming, filling the front of his knickers with semen. Harry sucked hard on the head of Malfoy’s cock, drawing some of the ejaculate through the thin fabric and into his mouth. The orgasm went on and on, and Malfoy let go of Harry’s head and cupped his balls with both hands, working and massaging them through the straining fabric as aftershocks continued to pump come into his already filled-to-the-brim knickers.

At last, Malfoy slowly sank to his knees and pulled off his mask.

And in doing so, broke the one Southwark rule that was never to be broken. The one rule whose transgression meant immediate – and non-negotiable – expulsion. Harry drew a startled breath; not because the quintessential rule-abider had just broken the granddaddy of all rules, but because, in that moment, Malfoy’s face was the most beautiful thing that Harry had ever seen.

Dark-eyed and flushed-cheeked and sweat-sheened, Malfoy gazed at Harry with a completely unguarded, unpractised expression as though seeing him for the very first time. Haltingly, Malfoy leaned forwards, and even though it was another rule they were about to break, Harry couldn’t bring himself to care as Malfoy’s mouth found his and opened softly and almost shyly. Leaning into the kiss as far as his bonds let him, Harry gave himself up to it completely, as though the only thing keeping him from falling was not his tether, but the gentle caress of Malfoy’s mouth on his. After the explosion of sensation they’d both experienced with Malfoy’s orgasm, their simple kiss was excruciatingly painfully sweet, and Harry realised after a couple of minutes that he was whimpering continuously like a whipped puppy.

“I want to make you come,” Malfoy murmured into Harry’s mouth. “What do you want?”

“I know it’s hopelessly vanilla,” Harry murmured back, unable to bear the thought of pulling his mouth from Malfoy’s, even for an instant. “But all I really want to do is fuck you. Nothing fancy. Nothing kinky. I just want to be inside you.”

Malfoy smiled against Harry’s mouth. “I think that can be arranged,” he whispered before deepening their kiss and reaching behind Harry’s back to release his bonds.

“Don’t I need to submit a proposal to a vote of something before we can add a new item to tonight’s agenda?” Harry asked teasingly when Malfoy left his mouth for a moment to kiss and suck along the line of his throat.

“Who says it wasn’t already on the agenda,” Malfoy replied, and Harry’s cock twitched hard at the mere hint that Malfoy had planned all along on letting Harry fuck him. “The only think we’ll need to vote on is whether the knickers come off or stay on.”

Harry swallowed. The thought of peeling aside that spit and come soaked nylon to reveal that horny little hole just waiting to be penetrated was simply too good to pass up, no matter how much he wanted Malfoy completely naked underneath him.

“Leave them on,” Harry growled, seizing Malfoy’s hand and drawing it down to his painfully rigid cock.

Malfoy smiled and pulled his mask back on with his other hand. “How do you want me?” he asked.

“On your hands and knees,” Harry replied, summoning the omnipresent jar of lube from the corner and hurriedly coating his prick with a liberal handful. He liked his fucking good and wet.

Malfoy complied quickly, positioning himself with knees wide spread and his arse canted upwards like a pro so that the cheap nylon of his knickers strained to the verge of tearing, and the elastic dug cruelly into the cheeks of his arse. There was something about the tawdry utilitarianism of those knickers that drove Harry out of his mind with lust. They were so plain and blandly functional – in such stark contrast to the elaborate and overtly-eroticised apparel that one usually encountered at the Southwark. But in these things lay their allure, especially when they adorned the hips of the sartorially uptight Draco Malfoy.

“I’m not going to last long,” Harry said frankly as he positioned himself and slid a finger along the elastic of one of the leg bands. Malfoy, who had buried his face against his forearms which were folded on the floor, murmured something in reply, but Harry was far too focused on pulling aside his knickers to expose the dusky cleft of his arse and one of his poor balls. The other he left where it was, swathed in dark, wet nylon and straining hugely, but futilely, against its confines.

Seizing his slicked cock and pulling the foreskin away from the glans, Harry lined himself up with Malfoy’s arse and rubbed the head of his penis against Malfoy’s anus, shuddering convulsively at the sensation after having gone untouched for so long. The angle of Malfoy’s cant and the play of light and shadow left absolutely nothing to the imagination, and every time Malfoy’s anus pulsed open in anticipation of being breached, Harry glimpsed the glistening bright pink circle of his inner muscles. Taking a deep breath to steady himself, he pressed a lube-slick fingertip to the gulping little hole and waited a couple of seconds for it to throb and pull him inside. Fingering Malfoy steadily and deeply, he watched Malfoy’s balls tighten as he became aroused again, but he knew for certain Malfoy was ready when he stilled his hand and Malfoy began to fuck himself on his finger, taking it deeper even than Harry him  
self had gone.  
“I’ve never wanted anyone so much in my life,” Harry said, removing his finger and leaning forward to tongue Malfoy’s hole for a moment. “I don’t know what you put in that watery-arse tea you’re always plying me with, but whatever it is, it works. You fucking _own_ me, Malfoy.” Rising again to his knees, Harry held his prick steady and eased the very tip of it past the unbearably tight ring of muscle.

“Potter, will you ever just stop talking and fuck me?” Malfoy gasped.

Harry would have complied before the command had even left Malfoy’s lips except that he suddenly heard a twitter of familiar laughter. Balanced on the very edge of penetrating Malfoy’s body, Harry looked up with a start to see Ginny and Hermione standing in the open doorway.

“Now that’s something I never thought I’d hear Malfoy say – and to you of all people, Harry,” Ginny chirped. Harry stared at her. If it was true that long-time married couples could communicate telepathically, any second now she’d withdraw and close the door.

“Er,” Harry said. “Uhm, Ginny. Hermione. Do you mind? I’m kind of busy here.”

But instead of leaving, Ginny walked into the room and held out Harry’s cloak to him. “I’m sorry, sweetie,” she said. “But Fleur just sent word that Gabrielle has gone into labour and she and Bill need to leave immediately for Paris.”

“How immediate is immediate, exactly?” Harry asked in a small anxious voice.

“About five minutes ago, actually,” said Ginny. “Ron’s waiting out front. It took me forever to find you. Luna claimed she’d spotted you leaving this room ages ago and that you’d gone to the snack bar . . .”

“The _snack bar_?” Harry repeated incredulously. “When am I ever at the snack bar?”

Ginny shrugged. “How would I know, honey? It’s not like we spend our evenings here together. Sorry, Malfoy,” she continued, patting Malfoy consolingly on his upturned bum. “I’m going to have to steal my husband back.”

Harry literally felt tears of frustration spring to his eyes. He’d been so close – so fucking close to the erotic nirvana of being buried to the root in Malfoy, and now? Well, now it looked like he’d be cleaning himself up in the back seat of Ron and Hermione’s Vivaro on the way to an overwrought Fleur and three kids who’d probably eaten more sweets in the last few hours than he and Ginny permitted them in a month.

Before he could incur a lifetime of marital debt and tell Ginny he’d meet her and the children back at their house in half an hour, Malfoy pulled out of Harry’s hands and lay down on the floor.

“Bad luck, Potter,” he smirked. “Duty beckons.”

“But . . . but . . .” Harry spluttered, pleading with that handsome closed-off face, so different than it had been when Malfoy had removed his mask. "But . . ."

“I’m sure Malfoy’s bum will be here next time,” said Hermione. “Come on, Harry. Ron’s waiting, and he’s got Rose and Hugo with him.”

Harry groaned. “Please tell me you’re joking,” he said, gesturing at his unflagging erection.

“Poor baby,” Ginny said soothingly. “We’ll put you in the front seat with Ron.”

Malfoy chuckled at that and stood up to adjust his knickers. Harry took a small amount of consolation in the fact that he was fully erect and another Galleon-sized dark spot was spreading over the head of his cock. _He wanted it_ , Harry thought feverishly. _He wanted it as much as I did_.

It was just on the tip of his tongue to ask Ginny and Hermione to wait outside for just a moment, so that he could pull Malfoy aside and tell him . . . Tell him _what_ , exactly? Harry shook his head and drew his cloak about him. _Don’t let anyone else touch you tonight? I want you to go home wearing no one else’s scent but mine? I want you to feel the same agony of need that I do?_

“Good night, Potter,” said Malfoy, pulling his long dark robes back on and slipping past Harry like a shadow. “Don’t forget that the report on protocol compliance and Tiddlewick’s revised employment agreement are due on my desk on Monday.”

Harry was aware that he was gazing after Malfoy’s retreating back with the look of a lost kitten – an impression his askew ears no doubt exacerbated. Ginny rubbed his arm soothingly.

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” she said, and Harry could tell from her voice that she meant it. “I know how long you’ve been wanting to do that. You’ll just have to be sure to finish what you started with Malfoy in a fortnight. . . . Oh, shit!”

“What?” Harry and Hermione asked as all three of them descended the stairs with Harry trying desperately to bring his now-seriously-painful erection to heel.

“I completely forgot. The next Southwark night isn’t for a month because a fortnight from now is September the first, and the club never meets the week that Hogwarts starts.” Ginny held the door open for Harry and Hermione, and they headed down the steps towards Ron and the waiting Vivaro.

“Harry’s got dibs on the front seat,” Hermione announced. “And I’m driving.”

Ron grumbled, and Hermione scolded, but at last they were all situated, and Ginny had convinced Hugo and Rose that no, this was actually _not_ the best of times to pepper Uncle Harry with a million questions about his life as an Auror.

“A month?” Harry groaned, dropping his head into his hands. “A _month_? Can’t the club make an exception this year? I mean, think of the people who don’t have Hogwarts-aged children. Is it fair that we dictate their lives due to our children’s schedules? I think not . . .”

“What’s he jabbering about?” asked Ron from the back seat.

Hermione glanced at him in the rear view mirror and shook her head. “Trust me,” she said. “You don’t want to know.”

Ron made a face. “Ew,” he said. “Just please tell me whatever it is doesn’t involve Malfoy.”

Hermione and Ginny laughed, and Harry let his head fall back against the headrest. Although his erection was no longer connected to the anticipation of immediate sexual release, it had not subsided even a little bit. Could people die under such circumstances? Harry was pretty certain he’d heard that they could. He closed his eyes with a weary groan that only incited more sniggers from his wife and best friends. If he could think about anything other than the almost-nausea-inducing ache in his belly and cramping in his balls, he’d probably feel guilty. Because tonight had been anything but the usual Friday night at the Southwark, and Harry was going to have to consider what – if anything – he was going to do about it.

But only, that is, after he’d locked himself in the loo and wanked savagely to the memory of the naked desire he’d seen in Malfoy’s face.

 

For the first time in years, Harry’s weekend passed so slowly that he would’ve sworn someone had hit him with a surreptitious _Molasses-in-January_ spell. Saturday crawled by despite taking the boys to Diagon Alley for James’s third and Albus’s first annual Hogwarts shopping trip (otherwise known to Ginny and himself as Shake Down Your Parents Day). Everywhere they went, Harry found himself always on the look-out for Malfoy’s pale blond head. After all, there were only two available weekends before Hogwarts started, and Malfoy would have to take Scorpius shopping, wouldn’t he?

_Wouldn’t he?_

Harry shook his head and tried to focus on the elaborate explanation James was giving of the latest Muggle model rocket he wanted to build, while ensuring at the same time that Albus didn’t dribble ice cream down the front of his new robes which he’d insisted on wearing out of the shop. That way only madness lay.

When he and Ginny had joined the Southwark Swingers Club five years ago, they’d undergone the admissions procedures that were required of everyone (and which surprisingly few of the applicants weathered). First, there had been the application itself, which had involved a joint essay on why the applicant couple believed that the swingers’ lifestyle was right for them. Then there had been the rigorous interview process. Harry and Ginny had met with no fewer than ten of the Club’s longest standing members – both together and individually – and been asked the most personal questions imaginable: Did they have children? How many? Had they been raised as Muggles? How old were they both when they’d had their first orgasms? How many sexual partners had they been with before they were married? What was the one thing they’d _never_ do, sexually, with another person and why not? Was either of them prone to jealousy? And most daunting of all, what was the one thing that they most desired that their spouse either would not or could not do?

It was when asked that question by Barry Krackenbarry while sitting in the rather conventionally decorated parlour of the Club’s mansion, sipping tea and munching on HobNobs, that Harry had first confessed aloud something he’d kept secret for as long as he could remember, namely, that he was intensely attracted to men. Ginny, fortunately, had admitted that she’d always been rather attracted to other women and had taken his hand in both of hers and held it for the duration of the meeting, but Harry suspected (as he was certain she did, too) that what he felt for other men and what Ginny might feel in passing for other women were vastly different. Although curious and adventuresome, Ginny’s sexual desires were superficial compared to his – they were attractions and urges that she could turn on and off like a _Lumos_. For her, belonging to the Southwark was as much about socialising and having fun as it was about sex. But for Harry, it was an absolutely necessary release. That day in Krackenbarry’s office, he’d said things that he was certain his marriage – or any marriage, for that matter – could not survive. Fortunately, the last five years had proved him wrong, and having a designated outlet had rendered his needs manageable. His urges bearable.

And then along came Malfoy.

Looking back, Harry had to admit that his prevailing sense that Malfoy was going to drive him around the bend coincided almost exactly to with the day that he’d first seen Malfoy and Astoria step through the mansion’s doors. Before that, he’d had a fair amount of contact with Malfoy, seeing as they were neighbours and seeing that Malfoy had infiltrated every formal aspect of Wizarding society, but it wasn’t until Harry had started to see him every fortnight at the Southwark that he’d started to think – inescapably – of Malfoy as a sexual being.

It had all been downhill from there.

Harry scrubbed his face wearily. All he could hope was that this was merely a passing obsession. He’d had them before: fleeting one or two-month crushes on certain members (all of them male), but they’d never evolved into anything troublesome. In fact, Harry had discovered over the years (and much to his relief) that all he needed was a couple of goes with the same bloke for the desire to wane to a manageable attraction. Certainly, he’d wanted to fuck those men, but he’d never wanted anything more than that. He’d never once wanted to bump into them outside the Southwark, or go to dinner with them, or snog them in a park under the moonlight. Those were things he did with Ginny and Ginny alone. She was his wife, his partner. Yes, he fucked other people while wearing a mask every fortnight, but Ginny was the one he made love to face to face in the light of the morning sun as it flooded their bedroom and warmed their sheets.

 _The one thing that you can never do_ Krackenbarry, had told them that day, _is let it become about more than just sex. That is the Club’s one unbreakable rule, and that’s why we don’t permit members to go unmasked or to kiss. Break it, and you’re out. There are no second chances._

In other words, at the Southwark Swingers Club, everything went. Except falling in love. Wanting to shit on someone’s face was all fine and good, but wanting to kiss them was taboo.

Sitting in the window of Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlour, listening distractedly to his sons’ chatter and scouring the crowds of families passing by for a glimpse of blond, Harry for the first time knew exactly what Krackenbarry meant. Ironically, it was because of Malfoy that Harry finally comprehended the necessity of rules and the even greater necessity that they remain unbroken. Harry was going to have to get this situation under control – and fast.

 

Monday morning dawned with all the usual inauspiciousness of a regular Monday morning, and Harry actually found himself breathing a sigh of relief when Albus dropped the open carton of pumpkin juice on the floor, and James descended the stairs intact except for his eyebrows, which had been singed off sometime between his going up to bed the night before and coming down for breakfast, and Lily broke out in a temper tantrum at the table over Ginny’s refusal to buy her a Muggle mobile phone. He even smiled when the cat puked on his shoes. No day that started this annoyingly could possibly lead to Harry propositioning Malfoy in his office and making passionate love to him on his desk while the world fell down around them for all they cared.

“Morning, boss,” Ron said darkly the instant Harry stepped from the Floo. “We have a ‘situation.’”

Harry smiled cheerfully. “Wonderful! Lay it on me, Ron. Did my secretary quit – again? Was there a mass breakout of necromancers? Did Tiddlywink fail an exam? Oops, actually that last thing wouldn’t actually count as a ‘situation’ in my estimation . . .”

A distinctly unamused cough from the direction of the water cooler interrupted Harry, and he spun around to find Malfoy, standing with his arms crossed and wearing impeccably tailored pinstriped robes and the darkest scowl Harry had ever seen on a solicitor who wasn’t facing imminent disbarment.

“Er,” said Harry. “Sorry to hear about the grievance board, Malfoy. But don’t worry. I’m sure there are plenty of jobs a disgraced solicitor can do.”

Uncrossing his arms, Malfoy pushed himself away from the wall he was leaning against and stalked towards Harry and Ron, both of whom did their utmost not to retreat. After all, Aurors giving way to solicitors was definitely not a trend Harry wanted to start.

“What, may I ask, is the meaning of this?” Malfoy said, brandishing the thinnest folder Harry had ever before seen in Malfoy’s possession in Harry’s face like a weapon, which (when Harry came to think about it) it probably was. After a month of working with Malfoy as the Minister’s new counsel he’d grown to appreciate the saying, “The quill is mightier than the wand.”

Managing to stand his ground despite the fact that it brought Malfoy and his intoxicating scent well within Harry’s personal space, Harry frowned and folded his arms. 

“What’s your problem, Malfoy?” he asked. “That’s the report on the steps I’ve taken to bring the department into line with the new protocol as well as a revised draft of Tiddlywink’s employment agreement.”

Malfoy blinked at him as though Harry were so irredeemably insane that he doubted he possessed the requisite psychiatric skills to converse with him.

“Potter,” he said. “I just glanced at this folder. There are five pages in it.”

Ron clapped Harry on the back. “Good work, mate,” he said. “Five pages! And without Hermione’s help. I’m impressed!”

Malfoy turned his withering glare on Ron, who struggled visibly for a moment not to give in to the instinct to hide behind Harry.

“The original Tiddlywink agreement . . .”

“Sir, I believe you meant ‘Tiddlewick,’” Tiddlewick piped up from the wilderness of apprentice cubicles behind them.

“. . . was thirty pages long,” said Malfoy. “And the protocol – every section and sub-section of which you were to bring your sorry department into line with – was over one hundred pages.” He advanced even deeper into Harry’s personal space, much to Harry’s chagrin. “Tell me, Potter,” he continued, “that this . . .” he brandished the folder yet again, “. . . is only the _index_ of your report.”

Harry swallowed. Audibly.

Malfoy drew back and fixed him with a gaze of purest incredulity.

“I see,” he said, his voice cold and deadly. “Five minutes, Potter. My office.” And with a _crack_ he Apparated on the spot.

“Whoa,” Ron breathed. “That is one pissed off prat.”

Harry turned to him and grabbed him by the shoulders. “I can’t do it,” he said. “I can’t go in there!”

Ron nodded solemnly. “I hear you, mate. And if I could, I’d take your place. But you’re the boss, and I have an oven I need to go and stick my head in.”

Harry shook his head. “No, Ron. It’s not like that. I can’t . . .” He stopped himself just in time and dropped his hands from Ron’s shoulders. “All right,” he sighed. “But if I’m not back by lunch, for the love of Zeus, come and get me, alright?”

Ron gripped his shoulder in solidarity. “You can do it, boss,” he said. “I know you can.”

Harry smiled shakily. If only he could be so certain.

 

After nearly a minute of standing outside Malfoy’s office door, Harry finally found the courage to raise his hand and knock.

“Come in,” Malfoy called icily.

“Look, Malfoy. So, I cut a few corners. No need to . . .”

Harry stopped mid-sentence and his jaw hit his collarbone just before his knees hit Malfoy’s priceless Persian carpet. Malfoy turned to look over his shoulder and smirked.

“That’s the second time these knickers have dropped you like a sack of flour, Potter. If it ever got out that the Head Auror can be felled by nothing more than a cheap scrap of pink nylon, the Republic would be fucked.”

Harry groaned. “Malfoy,” he said. “We can’t do this. It’s against the rules.”

Malfoy regarded him for a moment. Seeing the painful sincerity in Harry’s face, he stood up from his position bent over his desk and came over to where Harry knelt. Fluidly, he dropped down in front of him and cupped Harry’s chin in his hands, lifting it until Harry had nowhere else to rest his eyes but Malfoy’s decidedly unmasked face, lit unflinchingly by the morning sun.

“You’re right,” he said simply. “It is against the rules.” He paused and leaned forward to taste Harry’s mouth with his. “But you know what they say about rules,” he murmured.

“You were planning this all weekend . . ?” Harry said, still feeling stunned, but also warm and alive with the whisper of possibility. Malfoy nodded, his lips brushing against Harry’s in the process and sending shocks of sensation straight to Harry’s groin.

“Ever since I walked out of that room on Friday night and went straight to the loo to finish off what we’d started.”

Harry groaned at the thought of Malfoy forgoing any number of willing partners and resorting instead to his own hand and thoughts of him.

“You just made my excuse to drag you in here obvious by submitting that paltry scribble you labelled a report.”

Harry grinned and opened his mouth to Malfoy’s searching kiss, and for a long time they did nothing else but explore each other with their tongues and hands. Sliding his hands down Malfoy’s bare shoulders and back, Harry slipped his fingers under the elastic of Malfoy’s knickers and traced a line from his tail bone down into the warm cleft of his arse.

“I still want to fuck you, Malfoy,” he said. “I want it more than I’ve ever wanted anything. But I’m going to say, right here, right now, that I’m not leaving Ginny.”

Malfoy kissed him deeply and wetly before pulling away just far enough that the string of saliva stretching between their mouths remained intact.

“I’m not asking you to,” he said. “And neither am I going to leave Astoria. But I have to tell you: I have been out of my mind with desire for you for as long as I can remember. I thought I could control it. Put limits and boundaries on it. I made rules for myself to keep myself from wanting you too much, and every time, I broke them. Sometimes, Harry, wanting something and trying to deny it makes it more dangerous than just simply giving in.”

Gently, Harry laid Malfoy out beneath him and peeled off the pink knickers – those cheap two-Sickle knickers that had started all of this – and chucked them irreverently on to Malfoy’s desk.

“There will be rules,” he murmured as he kissed and suckled a line down Malfoy’s throat.

“There always are,” Malfoy agreed, reaching up to loosen Harry’s tie and unbutton his shirt.

“And there will be strict agreements,” Harry continued as he unbuckled his belt and pushed his trousers off his hips.

“Naturally,” Malfoy replied, spreading his legs and pulling Harry down between them.

“And we will have to scrupulously adhere to them,” Harry gasped as he probed Malfoy’s hole with his finger and realised he’d already prepared himself.

“Of course, I’d expect nothing else,” Malfoy agreed, drawing his knees up and offering himself to be penetrated.

“And any changes to the rules . . . _oh!_ . . . and agreements must be fully vetted and discussed,” Harry groaned as he sank, at long last, into the tight hot clench of Malfoy’s body.

“Fully vetted,” Malfoy panted, grabbing Harry’s hips and pulling him deeper. “And discussed . . . oh fuck!”

“And any dissolution . . . of this . . . oh fuck, that feels good . . . partnership must be . . .”

“Harry?” Malfoy asked.

Harry lifted his head from the exquisitely sunlit view of his cock disappearing between Malfoy’s legs. “Yes, Draco?”

“Has anyone ever told you that you talk too much?”

Harry gaped at him for a moment as memories of countless droning meetings unspooled in his brain, but then Malfoy rolled his hips and bore down on his cock in a way that made Harry see stars, and he forgot what it was they’d even been discussing in the first place as he lost himself to the primal animal need to fuck and be fucked. A need whose only governing principle was life and whose only rule was pleasure.

Lowering his mouth again to Malfoy’s and kissing him as the first shudder of his climax claimed him, Harry found himself thinking that there, at last, was one rule he could live with.

 

_fin._


End file.
